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AM ACC Clips Report - May 22, 2019

Industry and Association News

(ACC Mentioned) Toolmakers Eye Impact of Steel, Aluminum Tariff Moves
May 21, 2019 | Plastics News
By Bill Bregar

The U.S. plastics tooling sector should benefit from lower steel and aluminum prices, but experts are taking a wait-and-see attitude on the impact of lifting tariffs on steel and aluminum from Canada and Mexico.
(ACC Mentioned) U.S. Chemical Production Gained in April, ACC Says
May 21, 2019 | ChemEngOnline
By Scott Jenkins

According to the American Chemistry Council (ACC; Washington, D.C.; www.americanchemistry.com), the U.S. Chemical Production Regional Index (U.S. CPRI) rose by 0.3 percent in April, following a 0.3 percent decline in March and a 0.2 percent decline in February. During April, chemical output was higher across all regions, ACC says.
(ACC Mentioned) New Report Reveals 70 Million Metric Tons of Plastic Burned Worldwide Each Year
May 21, 2019 | Inhabitat
By Lucienne Cross

A new report reveals the scale of the world’s plastic problem and the alarming amount of plastic that is burned. Despite the grave and well-documented consequences for human health, about 12 percent of all plastic in the U.S. is burned. In middle- and low-income countries without the infrastructure to recycle, plastic is burned at a much higher rate.
Democrats Move to Boost Staffing, Limit Reprogramming
May 21, 2019 | E&E News PM
By Kevin Bogardus

House Democrats today outlined their priorities for spending legislation that would fund EPA in fiscal 2020, including barring reshaping of the agency's workforce.
House Ramps Up Scrutiny Of Controversial EPA Science Data, PM Measures
May 21, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Doug Obey

House appropriators are ramping up their scrutiny of some of the Trump EPA's controversial science decisions, all but barring the agency from advancing its data transparency rule until after consulting with its own science advisors and then requiring the agency to seek National Academy of Sciences (NAS) review of any final data rule.

TSCA News

TSCA Litigation: NGOs' Legal Standing Takes Centre Stage
May 21, 2019 | Chemical Watch
By Kelly Franklin

Judges presiding over recent oral arguments on two TSCA ‘framework rules’ have suggested that it may be more appropriate for NGO petitioners to challenge individual chemical determinations in court, rather than the EPA’s process for conducting evaluations.

Chemical Management News

(ACC Mentioned) Internal Emails Reveal How the Chemical Lobby Fights Regulation
May 22, 2019 | The Guardian
By Emily Holden

Jayne DePotter spent almost a decade making her Michigan jewelry studio a second home for young artists seeking direction, seniors looking to exercise their hands and minds and new immigrants in search of community.
(ACC Mentioned) NAS Backs Subclass Review For Flame Retardants, Highlighting PFAS Method
May 21, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Maria Hegstad

A recent National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report proposing a clustering approach of grouping flame retardant chemicals into subclasses for risk assessment is highlighting the emerging consensus that EPA and others are considering for addressing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), another large group of ubiquitous chemicals that are also subject to high-profile public scrutiny.
Why the Guardian Is Launching a Major Reader-Funded Project on the Toxicity of Modern Life
May 22, 2019 | The Guardian

Pesticides in your breakfast cereal. Carcinogenic chemicals in your furniture, and contaminated drinking water.
The US Allows 1,300 Chemicals Banned by Europe to Be Used in Cosmetics. Why?
May 22, 2019 | The Guardian
By Oliver Milman

A brief but telling piece of legislation was put forward in Connecticut in January. Just three lines in length, the bill calls for any cosmetics in the state to “meet the chemical safety standards established by the European Union”.
Explained: The Toxic Threat in Everyday Products, From Toys to Plastic
May 22, 2019 | The Guardian
By Lauren Zanolli and Mark Oliver

Synthetic chemicals are in nearly everything we touch and consume. But some chemicals can be potentially harmful and a number of experts are anxious about possible long-term health effects of our everyday exposure. They say US regulations could be stronger.
Senate to Dig Into PFAS Bills, Setting up Conflict With House
May 22, 2019 | Politico Pro
By Annie Snider and Anthony Adragna

The Senate Environment and Public Works committee Wednesday launches its effort to force EPA to regulate toxic PFAS chemicals using a far narrower approach than lawmakers in the House are pursuing.

Energy News

House Appropriators Approve Energy-Water Spending Bill
May 22, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By David Schultz

The House Appropriations Committee on May 21 advanced a fiscal 2020 spending bill for the Energy Department, Army Corps of Engineers, and other agencies on a nearly straight party-line 31-21 vote.
House Panel Advances $46 Billion Energy Bill, Defying Trump
May 21, 2019 | The Hill - E2 Wire
By Niv Elis

The House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday advanced a $46.4 billion spending bill covering energy and water programs, defying requests from President Trump to slash spending.
Saudi Arabia Lines Up Deal to Buy U.S. Natural Gas
May 22, 2019 | Wall Street Journal
By Sarah McFarlane, Summer Said and Timothy Puko

Saudi Arabia has set up a deal to purchase U.S. liquefied natural gas from Sempra Energy, a new strategic direction for the kingdom as it seeks to establish a footprint in the growing global market for the fuel.

Chemical Security News

Ex-NSA Official Urges Utilities to Beware of Russian Hackers
May 22, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Blake Sobczak

Russian hackers pose a greater threat to U.S. critical infrastructure than their Chinese counterparts, a former intelligence official warned water utility executives in Washington yesterday.

Transportation and Infrastructure News

(ACC Mentioned) Rail Regulatory Board to Hear Shippers Speak on Demurrage and Accesorial Charges
May 22, 2019 | FreightWaves
By Joanna Marsh

At least 35 groups will be testifying before the Surface Transportation Board (STB) this week to provide their perspective on how the Class I railroads assess demurrage and accessorial charges.
Senate Democrats Detail Climate Requests for Transportation Bill
May 21, 2019 | Inside EPA

More than 40 Senate Democrats are urging the leaders of the environment committee to include at least $2.5 billion per year for climate mitigation and resilience investments in the panel’s upcoming reauthorization of the surface transportation program, due in 2020.
Trump Throws Trade Curveball at Democrats
May 22, 2019 | E&E Daily
By Geof Koss

President Trump last night upped the ante on talks with congressional Democrats, calling for Congress to first approve his sweeping trade deal with Canada and Mexico before turning to a $2 trillion infrastructure package.
Virtual Pipelines: A Dangerous New Way to Transport Fracked Gas by Truck
May 21, 2019 | DeSmog (Blog)
By Justin Nobel

For several years a mysterious fleet of tractor trailers loaded with natural gas cylinders has been crisscrossing U.S. roads, and in the dark early morning hours on Sunday, March 3, one drove off a highway near Cobleskill, New York, careened down an embankment, and flipped over.
NTSB: Train Engineer’s Confusion and Lack of Automatic Braking System Lead to Fatal 2017 Wreck
May 21, 2019 | The Washington Post
By Ashley Halsey III

An Amtrak train derailed in Washington state in December 2017 because the lack of an automatic braking system allowed the engineer to enter a 30-mile per hour curve too fast due to his inadequate training on the route and the equipment, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded Tuesday.

Environment News

(ACC Mentioned) Wheeler Orders Agency to Rethink Costs and Benefits
May 22, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Niina Heikkinen

EPA is directing agency officials to draft new rules for how to include cost-benefit analyses into future rulemaking.
EPA Plans to Rewrite Costs and Benefits of Anti-Pollution Rules
May 21, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Jennifer A. Dlouhy

The Trump administration is planning to write new rules for how it weighs the human costs and benefits of environmental regulations, a move that could make it harder for future presidents to tighten limits on pollution and combat climate change.
House Democrats, GOP Clash Over Need To Count EPA Air Rule ‘Co-Benefits’
May 21, 2019 | Inside EPA
By Stuart Parker

House Democrats and Republicans are clashing over whether EPA should count the “co-benefits” of its air rules in cost-benefit analyses of the policies, a debate that will be key to the future not only of EPA’s power plant air toxics rules but also likely for the agency’s cost-benefit analysis for all future Clean Air Act rulemakings.
Dems Boost Climate Programs in Jab at Trump
May 22, 2019 | E&E Climatewire
By Adam Aton

Democrats are beginning to test how much climate policy they can enact with one chamber of Congress.
BP Shareholders Back Paris Disclosures, Shun Hard Targets
May 22, 2019 | E&E Energywire
By Jenny Mandel

Royal Dutch Shell PLC and BP PLC faced intense pressure on climate change at their annual meetings yesterday as protesters sought to disrupt the gatherings and draw eyes to their cause.
Oxy, Carbon Engineering to Build Largest Carbon-From-Air Plant
May 21, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Abby Smith

Coming soon to Texas’ Permian Basin: the world’s largest direct air capture facility.
Council of Ministers Adopts Directive to Restrict Single-Use Plastics
May 22, 2019 | Chemical Watch

The EU Council of Ministers has adopted a Directive aimed at reducing the impact of certain plastic products on the environment.

Industry and Association News

(ACC Mentioned) Toolmakers Eye Impact of Steel, Aluminum Tariff Moves

May 21, 2019 | Plastics News

By Bill Bregar

The U.S. plastics tooling sector should benefit from lower steel and aluminum prices, but experts are taking a wait-and-see attitude on the impact of lifting tariffs on steel and aluminum from Canada and Mexico.
Dropping the tariffs removes a major hurdle to passage of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) trade deal by all three countries.
A year ago, President Donald Trump's administration slapped tariffs of 25 percent for steel and 10 percent for aluminum imported into the United States. Trump announced the rollback of the duties during a May 17 speech to the National Association of Realtors.
Removing the tariffs "was the right thing to do," said consultant Laurie Harbour, president and CEO of Harbour Results Inc. in Southfield, Mich.
Harbour said it's a good thing for mold makers, but she is not convinced metals prices will come down. One factor is that U.S. tariffs remain in place for steel and aluminum from Europe.
"I don't think it's going to lower steel prices because steel prices were inflated artificially," Harbour said. "There's a lot of steel that the Canadians buy out of the U.S., and there's some steel that the U.S. buys out of Canada."
Mold makers are watching the news, but global trade tensions are complex and can be hard to figure out, said Mike Skukalek, chief financial officer for Krieger Craftsmen Inc. of Grand Rapids, Mich. He buys steel for the company.
"Everything changes so fast. The uncertainty over it may or may not happen, and how quickly that can change today," he said.
Stan Glover, director of technical sales at screw and component maker Zeiger Industries Inc. in Canton, Ohio, has a background in the steel industry.
"I think it does mean something for the mold makers. It's good news for the American and the Canadian market," Glover said. Canada is a significant supplier of mold steel, he said.
Glover said prices for mold steel "should stabilize and start to decline some," after the tariffs come off.
Plastics industry trade groups praised the removal of the Section 232 tariffs for fostering the new free trade agreement.
"Mexico and Canada are our nation's biggest trading partners. The U.S. plastics industry applauds the Trump administration for recognizing the importance of these relationships and for eliminating a roadblock that might've jeopardized the passage of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement," said Patty Long, interim president and CEO of the Plastics Industry Association.
"The USMCA is an important accord that will support American businesses and create jobs, and we hope the alleviation of these steel and aluminum tariffs serves as stepping stone toward its enactment," Long said.
The American Chemistry Council also said noted that Canada has announced the country is dropping its retaliatory tariffs, including those on $2.5 billion in U.S.-made chemical exports. Removing the steel tariffs also will reduce the cost of building chemical manufacturing facilities, ACC said.
https://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20190521/NEWS/190529981/toolmakers-eye-impact-of-steel-aluminum-tariff-moves

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(ACC Mentioned) U.S. Chemical Production Gained in April, ACC Says

May 21, 2019 | ChemEngOnline

By Scott Jenkins

According to the American Chemistry Council (ACC; Washington, D.C.; www.americanchemistry.com), the U.S. Chemical Production Regional Index (U.S. CPRI) rose by 0.3 percent in April, following a 0.3 percent decline in March and a 0.2 percent decline in February. During April, chemical output was higher across all regions, ACC says.

Chemical production was mixed over the three-month period. There were gains in the production three-month moving average (3MMA) output trend in organic chemicals, plastic resins, adhesives, coatings, other specialty chemicals, industrial gases, synthetic dyes and pigments, crop protection chemicals, and consumer products. These gains were offset by declines in the output of synthetic rubber, fertilizers, manufactured fibers, and other inorganic chemicals.

Nearly all manufactured goods are produced using chemistry in some form. Thus, manufacturing activity is an important indicator for chemical production. On a 3MMA basis, manufacturing activity edged lower for a third straight month, by 0.3 percent in April. Output expanded in several chemistry-intensive manufacturing industries, including aerospace, semiconductors, oil and gas extraction, rubber products and tires.

Compared with April 2018, U.S. chemical production was up by 2.8 percent on a year-over-year basis, a weaker comparison than in March. Chemical production was higher than a year ago in all regions, with the largest gains in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and West Coast regions.
https://www.chemengonline.com/u-s-chemical-production-gained-in-april-acc-says/?printmode=1

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(ACC Mentioned) New Report Reveals 70 Million Metric Tons of Plastic Burned Worldwide Each Year

May 21, 2019 | Inhabitat

By Lucienne Cross

A new report reveals the scale of the world’s plastic problem and the alarming amount of plastic that is burned. Despite the grave and well-documented consequences for human health, about 12 percent of all plastic in the U.S. is burned. In middle- and low-income countries without the infrastructure to recycle, plastic is burned at a much higher rate.
According to the report, published by Tearfund, Fauna & Flora International, WasteAid and The Institute of Development Studies, a double-decker bus full of plastic is burned or dumped every single second. When calculated annually, that is equivalent to 70 million metric tons.
Burning plastic releases toxic chemicals into the air that have been linked to heart disease, headache, nausea, rashes and damage to the kidney, liver and nervous system. In low- and middle-income countries without garbage facilities, the majority of trash is burned near homes — such as in the backyard — and poses direct threat to the inhabitants. In many cases, repeated exposure to the chemicals can lead to respiratory problems such as asthma and emphysema.
In wealthier countries, new incinerator technology claims to burn trash with fewer direct health concerns. The negative health impacts of plastic are not new; in fact, this month the United Nations voted to list plastic as a hazardous waste material.
Since the 1950s, 8.3 billion tons of plastic have been produced, and nearly half of that is only used once. This number is enormous but hard for many people to truly understand. According to National Geographic, this will be equivalent to the weight of 35,000 Empire State Buildings by 2050. But do these abstract numbers really help us put our problem into perspective?
The first step is understanding the world’s addiction to plastic, but then specific actions must be taken. The American Chemistry Council, which contested the report’s results, argues that governments and companies need to enforce stricter requirements for packaging.
Last year, major plastic producers formed the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, inclusive of Dow Chemical, ExxonMobil, Formosa Plastics Corp. and Procter & Gamble. The Alliance promised to invest $1.5 billion into the effort to reduce plastic’s impact on the environment.
https://inhabitat.com/new-report-reveals-70-million-metric-tons-of-plastic-burned-worldwide-each-year/

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Democrats Move to Boost Staffing, Limit Reprogramming

May 21, 2019 | E&E News PM

By Kevin Bogardus

House Democrats today outlined their priorities for spending legislation that would fund EPA in fiscal 2020, including barring reshaping of the agency's workforce.
In today's bill report accompanying legislation that would fund energy and environmental agencies in fiscal 2020, lawmakers outlined spending restrictions and funding boosts for certain EPA operations.
The House Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee approved the bill last week (E&E News PM, May 15). The full committee is expected to advance the legislation tomorrow.
The Trump administration has launched several reorganization efforts at EPA that will shift the agency's workforce within headquarters and in its 10 regional offices. Hundreds of EPA employees also have left the agency, and hiring has been slow to refill those positions.
According to the bill report, appropriators expect EPA to submit staffing targets in line with the agency's enacted spending as part of its operating plan. In addition, EPA would have to submit quarterly reports on its progress of meeting those targets under the bill.
EPA would be limited to $1 million for any reprogramming effort for each of its programs. The agency also could not use de-obligated funds to start a new program or office without the committee's approval.
The bill report language also makes clear that the legislation provides no funds for "workforce reshaping" at EPA, which was requested in President Trump's budget plan for the agency. That reshaping effort could have included funding for buyouts, early retirement offers and relocation costs for staff.
EPA's internal watchdog would receive more funds under the bill.
Appropriators recommend that the EPA inspector general receive $48.5 million as well as nearly $9.6 million from the agency's Superfund account. The IG would then receive about $58 million in combined funding.
EPA's watchdog office, which still has ongoing reviews related to former Administrator Scott Pruitt's tenure, requested that amount in a Feb. 8 letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney.
The IG would receive close to $8 million more than its current funding under the bill.
Overall, EPA would receive about $9.5 billion in fiscal 2020 under the legislation, close to $700 million more than the agency's current funding.Water and air
The bill itself would increase spending for EPA's geographic cleanup programs by $19 million to $476 million and specifies that $305 million should go to the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.
In the bill report, lawmakers would direct $78 million for the Chesapeake Bay Program, a $5 million increase over current funding. It also specifies that $17 million of the Chesapeake Bay funding should go toward grants for nutrient and sediment removal, small watershed grants to control urban and agricultural runoff, and state-based implementation plans.
Appropriators also outlined spending bumps for cleanups in Puget Sound and Long Island Sound at $31 million and $20 million, respectively.
They want to provide $6 million for national research priorities, even though Trump had sought to zero that program out.
That money is intended "to fund high-priority water quality and availability research by not-for-profit organizations who often partner with the Agency," the report says. It is independent of EPA's popular Science to Achieve Results grant program and should be allocated within six months, appropriators said.
Under the bill, the amount of money funneled into state and local air quality management grants would climb about 4%, from $228.2 million this year to $238.2 million in fiscal 2020, according to numbers included in the report released today.
As E&E News has previously reported, funding for Diesel Emissions Reduction Act grants would tumble from $87 million to $50 million, while spending on the Targeted Airshed Grant Program would drop from $52 million to $30 million.
Radon reduction grants would be level-funded at about $8.1 million; the bill would eliminate money for a multipurpose grant program created several years ago to help state and local governments pay for projects of their choosing. This year, that program is getting $11 million.Science and chemicals
House appropriators are also wading into high-profile controversies involving EPA's use of science.
In the bill report, for example, lawmakers express concern over EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler's decision last fall to eliminate an expert panel that was helping in a legally required review of the ambient air quality standards for particulate matter (Greenwire, Oct. 12, 2018). The panel was intended to add know-how to the assessment of whether the current particulate matter standards are stringent enough to protect public health.
Wheeler, who has defended his decision to disband the panel as a streamlining move, has so far rebuffed calls to reconstitute it.
As a stopgap alternative, the House bill would order EPA to contract with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to review a draft agency roundup of the latest research on particulate matter's health effects.
Democrats would also order EPA to consult with another official advisory panel over the future of a 2018 proposal that would bar the use of scientific studies in drafting major new regulations unless the underlying data is "transparent" and "reproducible" (E&E News PM, April 24, 2018).
While that panel, known as the Science Advisory Board, had voiced a desire last year to weigh in on the proposed rule, Wheeler has sought to keep its role tightly circumscribed. In the report, the subcommittee urges EPA to seek feedback "on the full list of issues" raised by the Science Advisory Board.
Once the proposal is made final, the subcommittee also wants EPA to hire the National Academies "to assess the manner in which the rule alters the ability of the agency to use publicly available peer-reviewed scientific and medical studies in its regulatory decision-making," according to the report.
Somewhat cryptically, it would authorize EPA to use aircraft to monitor the release and spread of hazardous substances during emergencies.
The provision appears to have been inserted in response to a news report that Texas and EPA officials had rejected NASA's offer to send a specially outfitted plane to monitor air quality in the Houston area after Hurricane Harvey in 2017 (E&E News PM, March 7).
Appropriators took an interest in directing research for a class of toxic chemicals found in drinking water: per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.
The chemicals were once prized for their nonstick properties in cookware and waterproof properties in clothing and shoes but are now linked to cancer, thyroid issues and other health problems.
"The Committee supports the Agency's ongoing work assessing health threats from environmental hazards, including emerging contaminants such as PFAS chemicals," appropriators wrote.
Lawmakers would increase the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry's budget by $5 million from last year for a total of nearly $80 million.
In the report, Democrats would direct the agency to increase its health studies on PFAS, "including studies evaluating cancer risks and reproductive effects associated with exposure to PFAS chemicals."
Appropriators expressed concern over reassigning funds for EPA's Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), which assesses chemicals' toxic effects.
"The Committee is deeply concerned that the Agency has been inappropriately assigning resources provided for the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) in fiscal years 2018 and 2019 to support work in the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics," the bill report said.
Under the package, appropriators would require IRIS to provide data within 10 days of enactment on the time staff worked on the Toxic Substances Control Act program during fiscal 2018 and 2019, such as the number of staff members and number of hours worked by month. IRIS would also be required to submit quarterly reports for 2020.
Appropriators also would direct EPA to review a petition to add chitosan to the agency's minimum risk pesticide list. Chitosan is a growth enhancer for plants and helps plants fight fungal infections.
The committee would cut about $13 million in funding for licensing and registration for pesticides because of a law enacted in March 2018 that uses fees to pay for those tasks.
"The Committee expects that increased fee utilization will result in the need for decreased appropriations in fiscal year 2020 and in the future," the report says.
House Democrats would also allocate grants totaling $25 million for testing and monitoring lead in schools.Recycling
In the report language, House appropriators also demanded that EPA step up its support for recycling.
"The Committee is concerned that the current system of recycling waste materials in the U.S. is unsustainable," the report says.
It went on to direct EPA to work with stakeholders to develop a "national recycling strategy to strengthen and sustain the current system with recommendations for voluntary action" and provide it to the committee no later than nine months after the spending bill becomes law.
The call for EPA to get more involved comes amid a major shake-up in the global recycling market. China, which as of three years ago consumed over 50% of the world's recycled paper and plastic, announced in 2017 that it would ban imports of post-consumer plastic and mixed paper, according to industry estimates.
That move has raised the cost of recycling in the U.S. for many local governments and caused more paper and plastics to end up in landfills or incinerators.
At a recycling event last year, Wheeler said, "Our role at EPA is to help develop best practices, provide the data the public needs to monitor their recycling efforts, and incentivize action through our programs and grants" (E&E News PM, Nov. 15, 2018).
But the agency hasn't updated its facts and figures on recycling since 2015. At that point, less than 26% of all municipal solid waste was recycled.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2019/05/21/stories/1060374573

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House Ramps Up Scrutiny Of Controversial EPA Science Data, PM Measures

May 21, 2019 | Inside EPA

By Doug Obey

House appropriators are ramping up their scrutiny of some of the Trump EPA's controversial science decisions, all but barring the agency from advancing its data transparency rule until after consulting with its own science advisors and then requiring the agency to seek National Academy of Sciences (NAS) review of any final data rule.
“The Committee expects the Agency to take no final action on the [data transparency] rule until the Agency has concluded such consultations [with its Science Advisory Board (SAB)]," says draft report language that accompanies the House's fiscal year 2020 spending bill for EPA and other agencies.
In addition, the appropriators are also requiring the agency to seek NAS review of its scientific assessment of the risks of particulate matter (PM).
The directives signal that the appropriators are turning to science experts to block, or at least temper, planned administration measures that are expected to reverse long-standing agency assumptions and scientific practices that critics have charged would significantly weaken future protections.
Moreover, the reviews the House appropriators are seeking would almost certainly slow completion of any new data transparency rule and any future PM standard until well after whatever deadlines the administration had been planning to set.
The underlying appropriations bill, which would boost EPA funding in an effort to reverse years of a downward trend in federal backing for the agency, is slated for full Appropriations Committee markup May 22.
While the bill language contained few if any policy riders, the report language highlights appropriators' concerns with two controversial Trump EPA efforts that have drawn widespread criticism from the scientific community as well as the agency's own advisers.
As proposed, the science transparency rule generally seeks to bar EPA's use of any scientific research where the underlying data is not publicly available, a move which could block many existing studies from EPA's use. Critics, including SAB, have raised particular concerns about the rule limiting EPA's access to studies involving human health effects and trade secret information.
While SAB had initially asked EPA for a broad review of the rule before its finalization, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler recently sought to limit such a review and instead asked SAB to review a narrow issue related to how the science data rule could be amended to allow non-government entities to review confidential business or health data on which many studies rely.
But in a document posted late last week on the SAB website, an SAB workgroup pushed back on Wheeler's approach, asking a series of questions about the rule and a host of key undefined terms in an effort aimed at broadening advisors' review of the measure beyond what Wheeler had proposed.
Scientific Reviews
Now appropriators are ordering EPA to consult with SAB on all the issues on which the board is seeking consultation.
"The Agency is directed to engage in formal consultation on the proposed rule with the SAB. Further, given the centrality of scientific studies in Agency decision-making and the unique experience and expertise of the SAB on such matters, the Committee urges the Agency to seek feedback on the full list of issues on which SAB indicated the Agency would benefit,” the report language says.
In addition, the report directs EPA to consult with NAS after any rule is finalized. “Within 30 days after enactment or 30 days after this rule is finalized, whichever is later, the Committee directs the Agency to enter into a contract with the NAS to review this rule,” the report language says.
“The review should assess the manner in which the rule alters the ability of the Agency to use publicly available peer-reviewed scientific and medical studies in its regulatory decision-making, including what the NAS considers to be the best available scientific information, and be completed within 270 days."
In addition to any NAS review of the science data rule, the report also directs EPA to contract with NAS for an independent review of EPA's “Integrated Science Assessment for Particulate Matter,” seeking a report back from NAS within one year that evaluates issues including the ISA as a “scientific foundation for evaluating the adequacy” of current particulate matter standards.
The House language on PM is the latest turn of events in response to the scrappage of the PM panel -- undertaken by Trump EPA officials with the stated goal of speeding PM standard review but which could actually slow down the process. The elimination has already prompted calls from the agency's Clean Air Scientific Advisory committee to reconstitute its special PM panel and draft a new second integrated assessment, a request that House appropriators reference in their report language by stipulating that the NAS review include both the 2018 draft and “any subsequent ISA review” produced by EPA.
“The committee is concerned by the Agency's decision in October 2018 to eliminate the Particulate Matter review panel,” the report language states, referencing a highly controversial decision by EPA air chief Bill Wehrum to scrap an expert PM subcommittee that has historically provided input for periodic EPA review of air quality standards.
Other issues where the draft report language scrutinizes or pushes back against Trump administration policies include language denying EPA funding for additional “workforce reshaping efforts” at EPA, and a statement that the committee is “extremely concerned” about the drop in EPA compliance and enforcement activities and thus seeks a detailed breakdown of inspection and monitoring activities since 2013.
The draft report also includes a directive for EPA to provide the committee data on use of staff for the Integrated Risk Assessment (IRIS) program to support the Toxic Substances Control Act -- while directing EPA to continue to fund IRIS at 2017 levels; language calling for EPA to develop a new national recycling strategy; and language pushing back against the proposed modification of cleanups under the Resources Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and against the elimination of the RCRA waste minimization and recycling program.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/house-ramps-scrutiny-controversial-epa-science-data-pm-measures

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TSCA News

TSCA Litigation: NGOs' Legal Standing Takes Centre Stage

May 21, 2019 | Chemical Watch

By Kelly Franklin

Judges presiding over recent oral arguments on two TSCA ‘framework rules’ have suggested that it may be more appropriate for NGO petitioners to challenge individual chemical determinations in court, rather than the EPA’s process for conducting evaluations.
The development came in ongoing litigation, Safer Chemicals Healthy Families, et al v US EPA, over the final TSCA prioritisation and risk evaluation rules. Brought in 2017 in the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the claimant case argues that the EPA’s rules are not in keeping with the Lautenberg Act, particularly with respect to how the agency defined ‘conditions of use’.
But in 16 May oral arguments in Seattle, the panel of judges largely focused their questions on whether NGO petitioners have a legal standing to bring the case. To meet this bar, they generally must show a concrete injury.
Attorney Sarah Tallman, representing the NGOs, argued that petitioners have shown that the EPA’s rules violate statutory requirements in ways that "present a material risk of harm to petitioners’ members’ concrete interest in avoiding exposure to harmful chemicals".
Namely, she said, that it is "reasonably probable that if EPA fails to consider [certain] uses, its evaluations and its decision-making will be underprotective and underinclusive."
The Ninth Circuit panel, however, questioned whether the EPA’s procedural rules present that injury, or if the subsequent evaluations conducted through those processes will be the more appropriate venue to hear that challenge.
"What [the EPA is] actually doing with these particular chemicals and whether they are actually ignoring things is not what we have before us now," said US circuit judge Michelle Friedland. "It seems like maybe we need to wait to see, are they actually ignoring all these things, and then deal with it then."
And EPA attorney Samara Spence took this questioning a step further in her oral arguments, saying that the challenge is to "a hypothetical scenario of EPA perhaps, in some future rulemaking, making an arbitrary and capricious decision or a decision that’s otherwise contrary to statute".
"Injury is very difficult to tie to something that’s coming from these rules," she added.
Peter Keisler, attorney for industry intervenors in the case, added in his arguments: "All of the injuries that plaintiffs assert can only play themselves out in the context of individual chemical proceedings, each of which will be subject to judicial review, and each of which will establish a record that the court can look at: what has the agency done or not done, and how are petitioners injured or not injured by that specific action or inaction?"
The court has ordered petitioners to file a supplemental brief by 3 June further addressing the question of standing. The EPA and intervenors will have two weeks to file a response.Conditions of use
Beyond the question of legal standing, both sides wrestled with the core question at matter in the litigation: whether the EPA acted appropriately in finalising rules that give it authority to exclude certain conditions of use from evaluations, particularly with respect to legacy uses.
On this point, the EPA’s attorney argued that TSCA is a "triage programme", and that the agency has discretion to draw lines.
The number of chemicals in commerce, said Ms Spence, is staggering: "The way EPA sees it the best they can do is make progress."
There are a variety of ways to regulate products already on the market, she added, but the the Lautenberg Act filled a "regulatory gap" of addressing products when they enter the market. And under the amended law, "the strongest tool EPA has is a ban," she said. "You can't ban something that has already been taken off the market."
"So that is where EPA is focusing its efforts, and EPA has said that's what it's going to do at least for now," she added.
But Ms Tallman disputed that the EPA cannot address legacy uses of products, pointing to provisions in TSCA that deal with asbestos remediation.
"EPA has lots of tools to address these ongoing uses, and just because it might not have perfect tools to address something at the margins doesn't mean it shouldn't use the tools that it does have to reduce real risk to public health," she said.
More broadly, she disagreed that risk evaluations under TSCA are a triage exercise.
"Congress carefully set up a multi-step process to systematically evaluate chemicals" to determine if they pose an unreasonable risk, she said, "not slice and dice and narrow the risk evaluation in ways that pose serious risk to public health."
https://chemicalwatch.com/77765/tsca-litigation-ngos-legal-standing-takes-centre-stage

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Chemical Management News

(ACC Mentioned) Internal Emails Reveal How the Chemical Lobby Fights Regulation

May 22, 2019 | The Guardian

By Emily Holden

Jayne DePotter spent almost a decade making her Michigan jewelry studio a second home for young artists seeking direction, seniors looking to exercise their hands and minds and new immigrants in search of community.
And then she started to get sick. First came the brain fog, then the painful kidney and bladder symptoms.
“It feels like I have a bladder infection all the time,” DePotter said.
It was only after her doctor put her on cancer watch that state inspectors found a tank of toxic chemicals under the floor of a neighboring shop.
One of the chemicals, a degreaser called trichloroethylene (TCE), is dangerous enough to humans that the Obama administration sought to ban its use as a spot treatment in dry cleaning. It has been linked with the organ problems DePotter experienced, as well as cancer and birth defects. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says: “TCE is carcinogenic to humans by all routes of exposure”.
Donald Trump’s EPA, though, has chosen not to finalize the ban, one win among many for the powerful chemicals lobby whose former advocates have been appointed to senior jobs inside the regulator since his election.
The EPA could take years to review TCE, one of the first 10 chemicals it will consider under an update to US chemical laws. And internal emails obtained by the Sierra Club in a public records lawsuit reveal the industry wanted to go even further and to also relax guidelines for quickly cleaning up contaminated sites.
Documents analysed by the Guardian show industry lobbying against the science linking illnesses and TCE and two other controversial chemicals – formaldehyde and hexavalent chromium.
Pushing back on stricter TCE clean-ups
In June 2017, the American Chemistry Council’s (ACC) senior director Stephen Risotto in a letter asked the agency to “suspend the implementation” of a 2014 EPA memo laying out how regulators should hasten TCE cleanups.
As one of 56 lobbyists working for ACC in Washington in 2018, Risotto used an approach that non-industry chemicals experts and campaigners for stricter regulation said they encounter frequently.
Risotto criticized the science behind the rules and said the cleanups were costing companies. He contested the low dose at which EPA assumes TCE poses a risk, particularly to women of child-bearing age.
“The results on which the policy relies have not been reproduced in better conducted studies,” Risotto said in the letter.
Then deputy assistant administrator Patrick Davis, a political appointee, said no, but he suggested the EPA might revisit that decision later as part of a separate process. Under a new law meant to encourage more chemicals testing, the EPA is moving some chemical reviews from its risk assessment program to its toxics program, which is run by a former industry official.
Risotto didn’t give up, however, and a few months later, escalated the issue to Kell Kelly, a close aide to the EPA’s former administrator, Scott Pruitt. In December 2017, Kelly had a meeting with Risotto and three other industry representatives, according to emails.
ACC Spokesman Jonathan Corley, in a response to the Guardian’s queries about the lobbying effort, said the basis for the cleanup rules is “contrary to the conclusions reached by most other scientists”.
The ACC disputed claims it sowed doubt about science, saying it “worked to advance the use of rigorous, objective and peer-reviewed science as the foundation of responsible public policy and regulation of chemicals”.
For now, the TCE guidelines stand, but that may not hold true. Manufacturers of the chemical continue to oppose the core study behind TCE regulations, which found that rats exposed to even very small amounts of the chemical in utero developed cardiac malformations.
The Halogenated Solvents Industry Alliance, which represents TCE users and makers, funded its own study to try to show that the rat research can’t be replicated. “A single flawed study should not be the basis for the toxicological value that serves as the basis for regulation,” the group said in 2017 comments to the EPA. Jennifer Sass, a senior chemicals expert at the environmental advocacy group the Natural Resources Defense Council, said while the study did prompt some “reasonable criticisms”, about a dozen others backed up its findings.
Sass said the industry is fighting the research because the EPA used it to assume that a developing fetus might be at risk with even very low levels of exposure for a short period of time.
In a response to the Guardian, the industry alliance argued the research has been “widely criticized,” including by the California Environmental Protection Agency. The group insisted the chemical is safe if used appropriately and does not increase the risk of cardiac malformations or other developmental problems.Up to 4,000 ‘vapor intrusion’ sites
DePotter, who is 56, has been wracked with guilt thinking about the young women who have spent days each week metalworking in her studio in a strip mall in affluent Franklin. She was shocked to hear that the industry would try to weaken cleanup rules for the chemical. She knows one of her students had bladder cancer and another had frequent bladder infections. After the contamination was revealed, she closed the studio and refunded tuition rather than risk anyone else getting sick, she said.
“You don’t know you’re breathing them in and you don’t know later in life what kind of damage is done to your body,” DePotter said. “I think it’s ridiculous to roll back the guidelines.”
Michigan officials have said there could be as many as 4,000 so-called “vapor intrusion” sites in the state, where invisible chemicals might be seeping into the air people breathe indoors.
In one Indiana town with underground TCE pollution, parents whose children developed rare cancers accuse the EPA of “serious mismanagement.” Other states, including New York and Wyoming, are struggling with polluted sites too. Without federal restrictions, Minnesota has debated banning TCE on its own.‘Sowing doubt’
Chemicals experts outside the industry say the lobbying efforts on TCE demonstrate the strategies that companies with toxic products have used for decades: sowing doubt about toxicology science, stalling regulation and wielding influence with political officials through campaign donations.
“The playbook repeats itself over and over,” said Sonya Lunder, a senior toxics adviser at the Sierra Club.
The US has long allowed companies to use thousands of chemicals with little or no data on whether they are safe. A 2016 update to US chemical laws is meant to require more testing, but critics say Trump’s EPA is using the new process to undermine ongoing reviews.
Lunder said the public only learns about the harmful chemicals that have unusual effects or that are discovered randomly by scientists. “A lot of the science is moving forward in a very opportunistic and chaotic way,” she said.
That has been to industry’s benefit.
But Corley said critics of the ACC are making “tired attempts to vilify the chemical industry to advance their advocacy goals.”
“ACC will continue to be a constructive participant in the discourse about these important issues,” Corley said, declining to comment on the number of lobbyists the group employs.
A long history of warnings about formaldehyde
The ACC has been lobbying the federal government to consider its own industry-funded science in reviewing two other chemicals – formaldehyde and hexavalent chromium – which have been known to be dangerous yet have been under debate for years. The EPA classified formaldehyde – used in wood products like cabinets and furniture – as a probable human carcinogenin 1987. The EPA was aware that workers who inhaled hexavalent chromium had higher rates of respiratory cancers as early as 1984.
In January 2018, the ACC sent a letter criticizing how the EPA was handling a review of formaldehyde. That summer, news broke that the federal government had been stalling the release of findings that most Americans inhale enough formaldehyde to be at risk for leukemia.
In the letter, the ACC said its formaldehyde panel had left a meeting with EPA staff “very alarmed and troubled”, that the agency might conclude that “any level of formaldehyde exposure results in some level of potential cancer risk”.
The group said EPA was relying on studies that “have been shown in recent years to have significant scientific and methodological issues,” and that ACC had “proactively supported cutting-edge research with leading scientists ... resulting in several dozen peer reviewed publications.”
Asked whether the ACC encouraged the government to delay the formaldehyde, Corley said the agency’s risk assessment program has “been plagued by serious issues for years.”
“It is no surprise that EPA leadership took time last year to reevaluate the IRIS program and how it was functioning,” Corley said.
The ACC maintains that “dozens of peer-reviewed studies” show the level of formaldehyde people inhale does not cause leukemia.
Now at the EPA: former industry representatives
The formaldehyde letter from ACC was signed by Kimberly Wise White, who was later assigned to the EPA’s science advisory board, which reviews what science the agency considers.
The formaldehyde review has been moved to a different program meant to prioritize certain chemicals, meaning it will be overseen by one of the EPA’s top chemicals officials, the former ACC executive Nancy Beck.
Other former industry representatives who now work on chemical rules at EPA include: Erik Baptist, a chemical safety appointee who worked for the American Petroleum Institute; Peter Wright, a Dow Chemical lawyer running the Superfund cleanup program; David Dunlap, a deputy in EPA’s research office who was a Koch Industries official; and Steven Cook, the head of EPA’s Superfund task force who was in-house counsel for plastics and chemical company LyondellBasell Industries.
Trump’s nominee to run the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, researcher Michael Dourson, withdrew from consideration after controversy over his close ties with industry.The Erin Brokovich chemical still under review
The chemicals lobby has also been pushing EPA researchers to consider more industry-funded research on hexavalent chromium. Also known as Chromium-6, the drinking water contaminant was made infamous by Erin Brokovich.
In an April public science meeting, officials at the EPA said there are more than a thousand studies on the chemical that have come out since the agency’s last review, on oral ingestion, in 2010.
ToxStrategies, a consulting group that represents the American Chemistry Council and the Electric Power Research Institute, presented multiple industry-funded studies that discount some of the findings the EPA is considering and flagged problems in non-industry research.
One study that showed a significant increase in stomach cancers relied on a cohort of cement workers who may have been exposed to other chemicals, one consultant argued.
The ACC in a response to the Guardian argued “mode of action” studies show no toxicity in rodents exposed to hexavalent chromium at 10 times EPA’s limit for drinking water.
For both formaldehyde and hexavalent chromium, industry has pushed the EPA to use mode of action studies, which show the specific change at the cellular level that causes an illness.
A chemical producer might argue that although there is an association between exposure and illness, there still isn’t enough evidence to show how the illness happens and rule out other factors. Industry lobbyists will also say that the EPA isn’t considering the correct dose or means of exposure.
Sonya Lunder, of Sierra Club, said the tactics are “generally used to call for more data or to critique whether an effect is relevant on human”.
“Sometimes all this buys is a little bit more time for them to do one more study, she said.
Chemical studies in rodents are expensive and time-consuming. So the federal government is relying more on cellular-level studies conducted in petri dishes, often developed in partnership with industry, said Jennifer Sass, of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The changes are “a complete disaster ”, she said. “What’s new now is that EPA is making decisions and calling chemicals safe,” Sass said, when “before there were just a whole bunch of chemicals with no decisions.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/22/internal-emails-reveal-how-the-chemical-lobby-fights-regulation

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(ACC Mentioned) NAS Backs Subclass Review For Flame Retardants, Highlighting PFAS Method

May 21, 2019 | Inside EPA

By Maria Hegstad

A recent National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report proposing a clustering approach of grouping flame retardant chemicals into subclasses for risk assessment is highlighting the emerging consensus that EPA and others are considering for addressing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), another large group of ubiquitous chemicals that are also subject to high-profile public scrutiny.
NAS' May 15 report, “A Class Approach to Hazard Assessment of Organohalogen Flame Retardants,” recommends that the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) group organohalogen flame retardants used in some consumer products into a dozen subgroups to assess their risks.
The CPSC had asked NAS for the advice, after receiving a 2015 petition seeking bans on four groups of flame retardants, based on the consumer products where they are used.
The NAS committee praises the class-based approach for risk assessment generally, writing that “[o]ne of the biggest challenges for the risk-assessment community is how to move from the traditional chemical-by-chemical approach to analyses that evaluate multiple chemicals together. … Although it is challenging to evaluate chemical groups, the number of chemicals in use today demands a new approach to risk assessment, and the class approach is a scientifically viable option.”
The report notes that there are three primary problems with the traditional approach of assessing chemicals one-by-one: “chemicals on which data are insufficient are typically treated as not hazardous, that untested chemicals are often substituted for hazardous chemicals, and that cumulative exposure and risk are often ignored.”
The report also notes precedent for using a class-based approach for the flame-retardant chemicals, specifically pointing to phthalates and cholinesterase-inhibiting pesticides as examples.
The NAS report comes amid increasing calls from many lawmakers, environmental groups, state agencies and other stakeholders for EPA to assess PFAS -- a class of thousands of chemicals in widespread use -- in a class or subclasses, to address exactly the concerns the NAS report describes.
But their calls are facing strong pushback from industry groups and Republican lawmakers, who charge that some bills that seek to regulate PFAS as a class bypass EPA's statutory practices and will impose unnecessary burdens on manufacturers and others.
As Congress gears up to address PFAS, the question of whether to assess PFAS as a class is a major topic of debate.
For example, during a May 15 hearing on PFAS legislation before a key House panel, lawmakers debated a bill, H.R. 2600 that would amend TSCA to regulate PFAS as a class. Democrats sought to make the case for the bill by comparing it to TSCA's original provision that regulated PCBs as a class.
“Even when we first passed TSCA in 1976, Congress recognized the statute might not work for some classes of chemicals. “That’s why PCBs were dealt with quickly and comprehensively, and as a class through a separate TSCA subsection,” said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL).
But Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL), the panel's top Republican, pushed back, cautioning that lawmakers cannot back “the use of good science or public input” only when they know that will lead to endorsing policy solutions they favor -- something that was a major principle in amending TSCA in 2016.
Whether PFAS is assessed and regulated as a class or not “will be the central question” as lawmakers move forward with legislation, said Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY), the panel's chairman.
Chemical Subclasses
While the NAS report calls generally for a class-based approach, it recommends in the case of the flame retardant chemicals breaking them into 14 subclasses. NAS' press release explains that the chemicals “cannot be treated as a single class for hazard assessment … but they can be divided into subclasses based on chemical structure, physical and chemical properties, and predicted biologic activity.”
NAS notes that using a class approach to assess chemicals' toxicity is relatively new, explaining that there “is no consensus in the literature on exactly what constitutes a class approach, and there are few examples of the use of such an approach, although the list is growing. The committee concluded that a science-based class approach does not necessarily require one to evaluate a large chemical group as a single entity for hazard assessment. That is, an approach that divides a large group into smaller units (or subclasses) to conduct the hazard assessment is still a class approach for purposes of hazard or risk assessment.”
As one example, the report points to a recent publication from researchers with EPA's research office and the National Toxicology Program, who are researching ways to test PFAS in subclasses.
NAS notes that PFAS “are a large class of chemicals defined by structural features and chemical properties,” and identifies the researchers' “challenge [as] to identify a subset of PFAS for testing with the goals of supporting read-across within structure-based subgroups and capturing the diversity of the broader PFAS class. … The investigators finally selected a set of 75 members of the class that represented 34 subclasses. Those substances are undergoing testing with an array of new approach methodologies.”
Just as NAS backs an approach that examines flame retardant chemicals in a subclass, so too do many involved in the debate over PFAS. For example, in a May 14 letter to the House subcommittee, the American Chemistry Council (ACC) appeared to leave the door open to consideration of addressing PFAS in subclasses even as it strongly opposed review of the chemicals in a single class.
“Our industry supports examining alternatives to a one-size-fits-all class scheme for substances using a more deliberate approach that acknowledges the differences within the chemical family,” the group said.
ACC's North American Flame Retardant Alliance (NAFRA) also appears to specifically support the clustering approach recommended in NAS' recent report on flame retardants. “By recommending a subclass approach, [NAS’] findings are consistent with other chemical assessment agencies,” the group said in a statement.
Environmentalists generally agree though some say that emerging monitoring and other technologies could drive the debate on how to assess and regulate PFAS in the future.
The Environmental Working Group's David Andrews urges the adoption of two classes for PFAS: one including the older, long-chain PFAS which were included in the 2010 phaseout agreement and a second class containing their short-chain replacement chemicals.
“There's a recognition the single chemical approach is failing and we need a different approach,” Andrews tells Inside EPA in a May 20 interview. But whether the chemicals are assessed in two classes or more, he thinks will end up being a “messy” debate. “It may just be different stakeholders have a different … risk tolerance.”
Citing the pending federal research, Andrews suggests that may indicate how EPA might move forward on PFAS through the use of subclasses.
But, he says, methods to detect and treat PFAS in drinking water and sources may reinforce the idea of PFAS as a class. Because all PFAS contain fluorine-carbon bonds, a universal method of detecting aggregate organic fluorine in water could be used to detect all PFAS, Andrews says, adding that methods to treat water containing multiple PFAS is also in the works.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/nas-backs-subclass-review-flame-retardants-highlighting-pfas-method

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Why the Guardian Is Launching a Major Reader-Funded Project on the Toxicity of Modern Life

May 22, 2019 | The Guardian

Pesticides in your breakfast cereal. Carcinogenic chemicals in your furniture, and contaminated drinking water.
Welcome to Toxic America – a Guardian project which will explore the health implications of living in an environment that can expose all of us to chemical contamination on a daily basis through the air we breathe, the food we eat, the products we use and the water we drink.
The American public is routinely exposed to toxic chemicals that have long been banned in countries such as the UK, Germany and France. If they’re deemed harmful in those countries, why not in the US?
We will examine the power of the $640bn chemical industry – which has a lobby that’s currently better funded than the NRA.
In addition, gaps in the US regulatory system mean untested chemicals legally enter food, cosmetics and other consumer products in the US, and make their way into our soil and water. Of the more than 40,000 chemicals used in consumer products in the US, according to the EPA, less than 1% have been rigorously tested for human safety. Under the Trumpadministration there are signs it’s only getting worse: attempts to regulate even deadly chemicals have been reversed by the business-friendly leadership at the EPA.
These toxins are not visible and this slow-moving public health crisis does not get enough attention from the US media. The Guardian hopes to change that – and we need your support. We’re asking our readers to help us raise $150,000 to increase our coverage of the toxic chemicals in our environment for the rest of 2019. This series will investigate the ways in which chemicals in our water, food and environment can impair growth, development and health. This toxic fallout can include: cognitive and behavioral difficulties, obesity, diabetes, infertility, birth defects, and cancers of the male and female reproductive systems.
We once thought these consequences only occurred as a result of extremely high exposures from disasters or other rare incidents. We now realize that low-level exposures to chemicals used in agriculture, personal care products, food packaging, furniture, electronics and carpeting can disrupt the molecules our body uses to maintain our body temperature, metabolism, salt, sugar and even our sexual development, according to authorities such as the Endocrine Society.
It’s possible to find formaldehyde, a known carcinogen banned in cosmetics sold throughout the European Union, in US hair-straightening treatments and nail polish. Parabens, linked to reproductive problems, are ruled out in the EU but not the US, where they lurk in skin and hair products. Coal tar dyes can be found in Americans’ eyeshadow, years after they were banned in the EU and Canada.
With rigorous, accessible reporting, this series will help you sort through the complex science and conflicting messages about what’s safe, what’s harmful and what’s unproven.
If we hit our fundraising goal by 30 June, the six-month project will include dozens of articles, videos, opinion pieces and visual stories over the course of 2019. The series will:
offer advice on how to navigate the supermarket to reduce your exposure to health threats – and toxins found in food, cosmetics and cleaning products.
look at the potential everyday dangers in our homes, from flame retardants in the sofa to carcinogens in dry cleaning.
explore how chemicals in our environment can impact fertility, parents and babies.
report on how plastic pollution is impacting human health as microplastic enters our food supply.
expose threats to our drinking water supply.
Examine the role of the American chemical lobby and raise awareness about its political influence and impact on public policy.
hold politicians, the Trump administration and regulatory agencies accountable for any failings to keep potentially dangerous chemicals out of products.
It will also look into the deeper questions of how we got here, who is responsible and what the solutions are. This time consuming, in-depth reporting is only possible with support from our readers. We hope you’ll consider making a contribution to this project to fight for transparency and accountability about the chemicals that can pollute our bodies, our soil and our water. Every contribution will help us reach our goal.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/22/why-the-guardian-is-launching-a-major-reader-funded-project-on-the-toxicity-of-modern-life

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The US Allows 1,300 Chemicals Banned by Europe to Be Used in Cosmetics. Why?

May 22, 2019 | The Guardian

By Oliver Milman

A brief but telling piece of legislation was put forward in Connecticut in January. Just three lines in length, the bill calls for any cosmetics in the state to “meet the chemical safety standards established by the European Union”.
The move, unlikely to be made law, is the latest signal of mounting anguish over the enfeebled regulation of everyday products in the US compared with European countries. Across a span of cosmetics, including makeup, toothpaste and shampoo, to items ranging from household cleaners to fruit juice to cheese, hundreds of potentially harmful ingredients banned in the EU are legally allowed in the US.
“Many Americans are unaware that they are absorbing untested and unsafe chemicals in their products,” said Alex Bergstein, a state senator who put forward the Connecticut legislation. Bergstein was previously the chair of the Mount Sinai Children’s Environmental health center.
“Generally, the EU has got it right. In the US we have a strong favouritism towards companies and manufacturers, to the extent that public health and the environment is being harmed. The pendulum has swung in an extreme way and it’s really going to take a general awakening by the public.”
The disparity in standards between the EU and US has grown to the extent it touches almost every element of most Americans’ lives. In cosmetics alone, the EU has banned or restricted more than 1,300 chemicals while the US has outlawed or curbed just 11.
It’s possible to find formaldehyde, a known carcinogen banned in EU-sold cosmetics, in US hair-straightening treatments and nail polish. Parabens, linked to reproductive problems, are ruled out in the EU but not the US, where they lurk in skin and hair products. Coal tar dyes can be found in Americans’ eyeshadow, years after they were banned in the EU and Canada.
“In the US it’s really a buyer beware situation,” said Janet Nudelman, director of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. “Cosmetics companies can use any raw material that they like and there’s no way to know if they are safe before they reach the shelves. The contrast with the EU is stark and troubling.”
At the heart of the EU’s approach is what as known as its Reach (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals) laws which require manufacturers to prove to regulators that a product is safe before it can be used. The US has similar rules for new chemicals entering the market but no such precautionary principles for the thousands of potential toxins already in use.
This means that certain dyes used in cheese, chocolates and juice are restricted in some European countries such as the UK – where a 2007 studyfound some artificial colors and preservatives are linked to increased hyperactivity in children – but not the US. Atrazine is the most widely used herbicide in the US but has been banned in Europe since 2003 due to concerns it pollutes water. Lead-based paints were banned in much of Europe before the second world war but it took the US until 1978 to follow suit.
Asbestos exposure has long been known to cause deaths and illnesses but the substance is still not banned in the US. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) attempted to do so in 1989 only to be overturned by the federal court following a backlash from manufacturers.
The clout of powerful industry interests, combined with a regulatory system that demands a high level of proof of harm before any action is taken, has led to the American public being routinely exposed to chemicals that have been rubbed out of the lives of people in countries such as the UK, Germany and France.
“When the asbestos ban got overturned the EPA got nervous about banning anything,” said Molly Jacobs, a senior researcher at the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production. “That was the last time the EPA sought very strict restrictions on industrial chemicals. The EU definitely has stronger policies.”
Of the more than 40,000 chemicals on the market in the US, the EPA has only banned six, including polychlorinated biphenyls (known as PCBs) which are linked to cancers, certain aerosol sprays blamed for the hole in the ozone layer and dioxins, used as an ingredient in Agent Orange, which the US sprayed during the Vietnam war.
Under a 1976 law called the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) the EPA has the power to limit chemicals, but critics say it is severely flawed. The act largely focuses on new potential toxins and even then gives the EPA just 90 days to work out if new products pose a risk before they hit the market.
A 1996 amendment known as the Lautenberg Act required the EPA to evaluate all potentially risky chemicals, but progress on this backlog has often appeared painfully slow. “The EPA is playing catchup, and under this administration things aren’t moving very fast at all,” said Jacobs.
The EPA recently listed 40 chemicals to be assessed for review, including asbestos, formaldehyde and trichloroethylene, which is used in refrigeration and can cause damage to the nervous system and liver. Andrew Wheeler, administrator of the EPA, said the agency was committed to the “successful and timely implementation” of the Lautenberg Act.
But while the process has lagged, deaths have mounted. More than 50 deathsin the US since the 1980s have been linked to methylene chloride, a lethalingredient of paint stripper that has been banned in the EU. The EPA recently got around to banning the chemical from consumer use after a group of retailers voluntarily removed it from shelves.
It will still be allowed for commercial use, however. “I am deeply disappointed that the EPA has decided to weaken its proposed ban on methylene chloride,” said Wendy Hartley, whose 21-year-old son Kevin died two years ago while using paint stripper on a bathtub, even after receiving training and wearing a protective mask. Hartley is one of two mothers who are suing the EPA claiming that their sons died while using the paint stripper.
“Workers who use methylene chloride will now be left unprotected and at risk of health issues or death. I will continue my fight until the EPA does its job.”
But even within the Trump administration, characterized by its zeal for deregulation, there is frustration that regulators have not been able to intervene as strongly as their EU counterparts. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently found asbestos in Claire’s cosmetics but could do little when the company refused to recall the products. Claire’s subsequently withdrew the eyeshadows and compact powders voluntarily.
Scott Gottlieb, the departing FDA commissioner, said the episode showed that cosmetics regulations unchanged since 1938 are “outdated” and need to be overhauled to ensure public health.
“To be clear, there are currently no legal requirements for any cosmetic manufacturer marketing products to American consumers to test their products for safety,” Gottlieb said. “This means that ultimately a cosmetic manufacturer can decide if they’d like to test their product for safety and register it with the FDA.”
In lieu of any new laws, consumer advocates want federal agencies to act more aggressively and defy chemical industry lobbyists. They concede, however, a more likely recourse is an upwelling of public outrage at the risks faced in mundanities such as applying makeup or eating lunch.
“I’m hoping for dramatic changes in our politics but there’s little chance of that,” said Bergstein. “The federal government is barely functioning, so consumers have to realize they have the power to become more vocal and demand change. The awareness is still not there, though.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/22/chemicals-in-cosmetics-us-restricted-eu

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Explained: The Toxic Threat in Everyday Products, From Toys to Plastic

May 22, 2019 | The Guardian

By Lauren Zanolli and Mark Oliver

Synthetic chemicals are in nearly everything we touch and consume. But some chemicals can be potentially harmful and a number of experts are anxious about possible long-term health effects of our everyday exposure. They say US regulations could be stronger.
One of those who is concerned is Leo Trasande of NYU Langone Health, an expert in children’s environmental health and author of Sicker Fatter Poorer, which is about the threat of hormone-disrupting chemicals.
Of the more than 40,000 chemicals used in consumer products in the US, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, less than one percent have been rigorously tested for human safety.
Consumers can’t know about them all, but Trasande says its good to have be aware of five groups of synthetic chemicals: pesticides, phthalates, flame retardants, bisphenol (BPA) and PFAS. “You can reduce your levels of exposure to these chemicals,” Trasande said. “You can’t completely eliminate these exposures because some of them are on our subways, our buses, they’re in environments we can’t control.”Pesticides
What are they? The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines pesticides as any chemical substance used to regulate, prevent or destroy plants or pests – usually insects, rodents or micro-organisms such as fungi and bacteria.
Residues are in up to 70% of produce sold in the US, according to the latest annual analysis of US Department of Agriculture (USDA) data by the health advocacy group Environmental Working Group.
Are they safe? The EPA says its regulatory actions and improvements in science over recent years has led to “an increase in the use of safer, less toxic pesticides … [and an] overall trend of reduced risk from pesticides”.
However, pesticides have been linked to a list of long-term health issues, including: prostate, lung, thyroid and bone marrow cancer; diabetes; Parkinson’s disease; asthma and macular degeneration, according to the Agricultural Health Study, a government-funded research study that has monitored nearly 90,000 farmers and their spouses since the early 1990s.
Farm workers face significantly higher exposure.
Haven’t there been some recent court cases? Yes. In a landmark ruling last August, Monsanto was found liable for causing a school groundskeeper’s cancer through exposure to Roundup, the company’s leading pesticide. Roundup, a glyphosate-based, organophosphate weedkiller, is one of, if not the most widely used pesticides in the world.
On 14 May another jury ordered Monsanto to pay more than $2bn to a couple that got cancer after using its weedkiller.
What can consumers do? Peel produce and trim the fat from meat and fish (where pesticides might collect); wash and scrub fruits and vegetables under running water. (Not all pesticides can be washed off, the EPA says. Some analysis suggests peeling won’t remove them all either.)
Buy organic where you can. But don’t avoid fresh foods if you can’t buy organic. Eat different kinds of produce to avoid potentially high exposure to a single pesticide.Phthalates
What are they? Phthalates are a group of chemicals most commonly used to make plastic more flexible and harder to break. They also act as a binding agent or a solvent. They were first introduced in the 1920s as an additive in polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and some healthcare products, such as insect repellent.
Exposure to phthalates is widespread and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) studies have found phthalates present in the majority of the population, particularly among children and women of child-bearing age.
They are in cosmetics and personal care products (shampoo, perfume, nail polish, hairspray, sanitary pads and more), vinyl flooring, mini blinds and wallpaper, raincoats, medical equipment and devices (including blood storage bags and IV tubes), plastic pipes, shower curtains, plastic film and food packaging, pharmaceuticals, lubricating oils and detergents.
Are they safe? Phthalates’ effects on humans have not been studied extensively, but they are believed to be an endocrine-disrupting chemical (EDC) that can alter hormonal balance and potentially cause reproductive, developmental and other health issues.
Links have been found to reproductive and genital defects, lower sperm count, disrupted hormones, and infertility has been found in numerous studies on animals, the National Research Council stated in a 2008 risk assessment report.
What can consumers do? Because they are in so many products, avoiding phthalates altogether is tricky but you can:
Minimize exposure by avoiding plastic food containers (plastics marked with a 1, 2, 4 or 5 recycling code are probably safest).
Use glass instead and never reheat food in plastic.
Check product labels – avoid anything with “fragrance” or phthalates listed.
Flame retardants
What are they? Since the 1970s, hundreds of chemicals have been used to stop the spread of fire in a wide range of common household items and other products. Common types include: brominated flame retardants (the most commonly used), OFRs, TBBPA, HBCD and OPFRs. Brominated flame retardants belong to the same class of chemicals as PCBs, which were banned by the EPA in 1979.
They can be found in furniture foams, carpets, curtains and other textiles, paints, food packaging, surfboards, home insulation, appliances, toys, electronics (laptops, televisions, phones, cables, wires and circuit boards), car seats and other automotive parts, and many baby products.
Even as some flame retardants have been phased out of the market, they remain in the environment, people and animals.
Are they safe? Scientists have found exposure to flame retardants can affect the nervous and reproductive systems and more.
An EPA report related to the risk evaluation process for HBCD, a type of flame retardant, references multiple studies finding potential effects on liver and thyroid function and the endocrine system. Some chemicals have also been linked to cancer.
Children are most vulnerable because their bodies and brains are still developing, and they are often more exposed to flame retardant-laden products, such as carpets, toys and other items.
What can consumers do? Inhalation of household dust is believed to be the main way people are exposed to flame retardants. They can also be ingested through food or absorbed through the skin.
Limit your exposure in the house by keeping dust levels down by wet-mopping, vacuuming with a HEPA filter and keeping HVAC systems clean.
Wash your hands before eating since hand-to-mouth contact can lead to flame retardant exposure – an especially important tip for children.
Avoid buying furniture and baby products filled with polyurethane foam.Bisphenols (including BPA)
What are they? Bisphenols are a group of chemicals used to manufacture plastics, epoxy resins and other products since the 1960s. Bisphenol-A (BPA), the most infamous of a group of 40 or so chemicals, was initially investigated for pharmaceutical use as synthetic estrogen in the 1930s. Many plastic products marketed as BPA-free contain similar replacement chemicals.
They are in receipt paper, food and beverage can liners, food packaging, DVDs and CDs, medical equipment, toys and automotive parts, water bottles and some dental sealants.
BPA is considered a building block of plastic and is one of the most used industrial chemicals today.
Are they safe? Though the health effects of BPA are still debated, it is thought to be an endocrine disruptor that mimics estrogen in the body, potentially causing adverse health effects.
The EPA says it is concerned about BPA because “it is a reproductive, developmental and systemic toxicant in animal studies and is weakly estrogenic”, adding there are “questions about its potential impact, particularly on children’s health and the environment”.
Studies, the agency says, “indicate that the levels of BPA in humans and the environment are below levels of potential concern for adverse effects”. But the EPA says “results of some recent studies” using low doses describe “subtle effects in laboratory animals at very low concentrations”, and notes some authorities, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), are taking steps to “protect sensitive populations, particularly infants and young children”.
What can consumers do? BPA is absorbed into the body mainly through food and drink, though contaminated air and dust might also be a factor.
Cut down on canned food or, if you can’t, rinse the food in water. Don’t microwave food in plastic containers or cans.
Avoid plastics with a 3 or 7 recycle code on the bottom, and use non-plastic containers when possible for food and drinks.
Choose BPA-free water and baby bottles (though these probably contain BPS or other alternatives).PFAS chemicals
What are they? PFAS, short for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a group of at least 4,700 synthetic chemicals that have been in commercial production since the 1940s to make surfaces resist stains, water and grease.
The most widely studied are PFOA (also known as C8) – used for decades to make Teflon non-stick – and PFOS, used to make Scotchgard water repellent.
PFAS chemicals can be in non-stick cookware, fire retardants, stain and water repellents, furniture, waterproof clothes, pizza boxes and take-out containers, food packaging, carpets and textiles, rubbers and plastics, electronics and some dental floss.
They can also be dispersed through air and water and have been found in the environment of the Arctic (and its polar bears) and open ocean waters.
They have been found in the drinking water of about 16 million Americans, including 126 military bases, where PFAS-rich firefighting foam is used for training exercises.
The CDC found PFOA in the blood of 98% of Americans, as well as in breast milk and umbilical cord blood.
Are they safe? Health effects of the various kinds of PFAS are debated, but a growing body of evidence has linked exposure to some of them to:
Developmental issues, cancer, liver damage, immune system disruption, resistance to vaccines, thyroid disease, impaired fertility and high cholesterol. PFAS have been dubbed “possibly carcinogenic” to humans by the EPA and the International Agency for Cancer Research (IARC).
Numerous studies on PFOS and PFOA on both humans and animals have shown a wide range of possible health effects, including decreased fertility among women, decreased sperm count and penis size, lowered birth weight, cancer and – among animals studied – death.
What can consumers do? Exposure to PFAS comes mainly from drinking contaminated water, eating food packaged in certain materials, or using products embedded with PFAS.
Avoid non-stick cookware, Gore-Tex fabric and clothing made with pre-2000 Scotchguard, and personal care products containing PTFE or flouro ingredients. When in doubt, ask manufacturers if their products contain PFAS since they may not be labeled.
Ask your local health department if your water is contaminated above EPA-specified levels, and stop using it if so.
Watch out for local fish advisories and don’t eat contaminated catches.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/22/toxic-chemicals-everyday-items-us-pesticides-bpa

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Senate to Dig Into PFAS Bills, Setting up Conflict With House

May 22, 2019 | Politico Pro

By Annie Snider and Anthony Adragna

The Senate Environment and Public Works committee Wednesday launches its effort to force EPA to regulate toxic PFAS chemicals using a far narrower approach than lawmakers in the House are pursuing.
The Senate panel plans to pursue more tailored legislation that would focus on only the chemical compounds that research has shown to be harmful to humans — rather than the House's efforts to include all of the roughly 5,000 members of the chemical class — and would require EPA to extend regulation to additional versions of PFAS as new information becomes available.
Policymakers in the Senate hope their approach will be easier for EPA to implement and better able to withstand court challenges, whereas lawmakers driving the House's push, including Energy and Commerce Committee members Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.), Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), represent districts with high-profile contaminations where activists are pushing for all-encompassing regulation.
It’s a divide that echoes the one over the overhaul of the Toxic Substances Control Act three years ago, when the Senate's compromise bill, supported by both the chemicals industry and many environmental groups, prevailed over the House's. That defeat still hangs over House Energy and Commerce Committee leaders as they take on PFAS.
“I think they are coming into this like Rocky II: Somehow they’re going to come back and recapture their glory,” said a chemicals industry lobbyist who speaks regularly with Democrats.
Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told reporters that his goal is to put together a single bill from the six that are teed up for consideration at Wednesday’s hearing.
“There’s still more to be learned about the potential problems that each one [chemical] would cause and that’s part of the discussion and part of the bills that are going to be heard,” he said.
Sen. Tom Carper (Del.), the top Democrat on the committee, told reporters Monday that there was no consensus yet in the chamber about exactly how to tackle the problem.
“There’s a lot of different legislation, a lot of different ideas — not a whole lot of consensus. I’d like to see toward the end of the week maybe a little bit of consensus about where we should go and what our course should be,” Carper said. He added that he hoped agreement would coalesce around legislation that could be added to annual defense authorization bill.
The first clues as to how the Senate might craft a compromise approach on PFAS legislation came in a bill, S. 1507 (116), introduced by Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Carper last week that would require public reporting of emissions of a subset of PFAS under the Toxic Release Inventory.
That bill would require EPA to list on the inventory PFOA and PFOS, the chemicals with the strongest science showing health dangers, as well as any PFAS that are currently subject to restrictions under TSCA — a category that the senators’ offices estimate covers about 200 of the 602 PFAS that are currently in use.
The bill would also create triggers to require EPA to list additional types of PFAS in the future, such as when the agency issues new TSCA restrictions or finalizes toxicity information.
Even though this approach would cover fewer types of PFAS in total, a Senate aide argued the approach stands to be better for public health. Under the right-to-know law, EPA must grant companies’ petitions to remove a chemical from the inventory if there isn’t enough evidence that it causes harm, and the agency has done so for individual chemicals in the past after it has listed their broader class.
The aide argued EPA could face similar petitions to delist individual PFAS due to lack of information if the agency proceeds with a class approach.
“That could actually have adverse safety consequences, since a company might then wrongly say that the dangerous PFAS was taken off the list because EPA found it to be safe,” the aide argued.
Kevin Minoli, a former top EPA attorney now at the firm Alston & Bird, said EPA could face a similar petition scenario under other laws, too, if Congress mandates regulation as a class.
For instance, he said that if Congress directed EPA to set a drinking water limit for all PFAS, the agency would likely be on solid legal footing to set it based on the most dangerous, well-understood chemicals, like PFOA and PFOS.
“If they don’t have any other option to separate the chemicals out, then they have to make the best regulatory decision they can, and I think the court would probably uphold them defaulting to what is health-protective as opposed to what is cost-effective for the least toxic ones,” he said.
But, Minoli said, after that regulation is finalized, manufacturers and others could petition the agency to change or remove the limit for their individual chemicals — a potentially lengthy process that would involve another whole rulemaking.
Both chambers are still in the early stages of legislating and key lawmakers haven’t solidified their positions.
Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), the top Republican on the subcommittee overseeing EPA’s drinking water and chemicals work, said he’s “very frustrated and struggling” with whether to support regulating the chemicals as a class — a shift in his tone from previous comments on the issue.
“I’m sympathetic to the concern about what if 30 years from now ... you haven’t been able to go through the process scientifically?” he said. “I personally have to wrestle with that future concern versus the due diligence — it’s such a big class of chemicals. I’m always concerned with walking away from science too.”
Energy and Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) told POLITICO his panel isn’t sure exactly what form the PFAS legislation will take following the legislative hearing but that “we’ll use those bills in some combination.”
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2019/05/senate-to-dig-into-pfas-bills-setting-up-conflict-with-house-1464160

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Energy News

House Appropriators Approve Energy-Water Spending Bill

May 22, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By David Schultz

The House Appropriations Committee on May 21 advanced a fiscal 2020 spending bill for the Energy Department, Army Corps of Engineers, and other agencies on a nearly straight party-line 31-21 vote.
The bill would provide $46.4 billion in discretionary funds, a $1.8 billion increase over fiscal 2019. The Energy Department would receive $37.1 billion, a $1.4 billion increase.
The measure now moves to the full House, whose Democratic leaders may be forced to re-fight a battle waged in committee over high-level nuclear waste storage in Nevada.
Nearly all of the Republicans on the Appropriations Committee voted for an amendment that would have given more than $26 million to the Energy Department to resume its licensing process for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
Four Democrats—Reps. Cheri Bustos (Ill.), Derek Kilmer (Wash.), Betty McCollum (Minn.), and Peter Visclosky (Ind.)—voted for the amendment, even though the committee’s Democratic leaders urged members of their caucus not to do so.
Surprisingly Close
The amendment, introduced by Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), ultimately failed on a 25-27 vote. Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.) joined all other Democrats in voting “no” and Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.) did not attend the committee’s May 21 markup.
The surprisingly close vote illustrates just how contentious the issue of Yucca Mountain is in Congress. Nuclear energy officials have for years said the Nevada location is the best place for permanent storage of the country’s radioactive waste, but residents of Nevada, their representatives in Congress, and many others—including the state’s powerful gambling industry—have fiercely opposed this.
“The latest attempt to force nuclear waste down Nevada’s throat has failed, and I won’t stop fighting until we put an end to Yucca Mountain once and for all,” Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) said in a statement after the committee’s vote.
While multiple presidential administrations struggled to determine whether to move forward with the Yucca Mountain site, spent fuel has been piling up at many nuclear power plants across the country. Simpson said 48 of the 53 members of the Appropriations Committee have some nuclear waste being stored indefinitely within their districts.
“They’re voting to leave waste in their districts,” he told Bloomberg Environment. “That’s what they want to do.”
Democrats Want Interim Storage
Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), chair of the Appropriations subcommittee that handles the Department of Energy’s annual budget, said allocating money to the stalled Yucca project would be counterproductive to the preferred Democratic solution to this problem, which is to ship the nuclear waste to several interim storage sites rather than sending it all to one site.
“We have a better idea,” she said. “The path that we are proposing helps us get waste out of districts sooner.”
The fiscal 2020 spending bill also rejects the Trump administration’s proposals to eliminate funding for the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) and the department’s loan guarantee programs; sell off the transmission assets of the four federal power marketing administrations (PMAs); and modify the laws governing the rates PMAs charge for electricity.
The measure would appropriate $7.36 billion for the Army Corps of Engineers, $357 million more than in fiscal 2019 and $2.53 billion more than the request.
Interior Department agencies would receive $1.65 billion under the bill. Almost all of that amount would go to the Bureau of Reclamation, which is responsible for maintaining federal water and hydropower projects in the West.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/house-appropriators-approve-energy-water-spending-bill

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House Panel Advances $46 Billion Energy Bill, Defying Trump

May 21, 2019 | The Hill - E2 Wire

By Niv Elis

The House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday advanced a $46.4 billion spending bill covering energy and water programs, defying requests from President Trump to slash spending.
The bill was approved by the Democratic-led panel in a mostly party-line 31-21 vote.
“This bill rejects the President’s drastic and short-sighted proposed cuts to key energy and water programs, including a 12% decrease to the Department of Energy, a 31% decrease to the Army Corps of Engineers, and a 28% decrease to the Bureau of Reclamation,” said Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), who chairs the Subcommittee on Energy and Water.
The bill, for example, upped spending on advanced energy research through ARPA-E, a program Trump wanted to eliminate completely, by $59 million.
It also included a $665.7 million increase for the National Nuclear Security Administration under the Department of Energy, which largely went toward nuclear weapons.
Republicans on the committee voiced concern that the bill did not spend enough on the nation's nuclear program, that it did not fund the nuclear repository at the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada, and that it was rushing ahead before final spending caps had been agreed upon.
“While the bill includes resources to strengthen our energy and water infrastructure, it does so at unsustainable funding levels, and we do not yet have agreement by Republicans and Democrats in the House, the Senate, and the White House on a budget framework," said Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), the full committee's ranking member.
Leaders from both parties and both chambers met on Tuesday to hammer out a budget caps deal, and said significant progress had been made, though they failed to agree on a final deal.
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/444899-house-panel-advances-46-billion-energy-bill-defying-trump

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Saudi Arabia Lines Up Deal to Buy U.S. Natural Gas

May 22, 2019 | Wall Street Journal

By Sarah McFarlane, Summer Said and Timothy Puko

Saudi Arabia has set up a deal to purchase U.S. liquefied natural gas from Sempra Energy , a new strategic direction for the kingdom as it seeks to establish a footprint in the growing global market for the fuel.
Saudi Arabian Oil Co., known as Aramco, plans to purchase gas from San Diego-based Sempra Energy’s Port Arthur project in Texas, the companies said Wednesday, confirming an earlier Wall Street Journal report.
The two companies said their respective subsidiaries, Aramco Services Co. and Sempra LNG, have signed a “heads of agreement,” which anticipates the negotiation and finalization of a definitive 20-year sale-and-purchase agreement covering 5 million metric tons each year from the Port Arthur LNG export project under development.
The agreement also includes the planned negotiation and finalization of a 25% equity investment in Phase 1 of the Port Arthur project, Aramco and Sempra said in a news release. The companies didn’t provide any financial details of the deal.
Aramco had been expected to close a deal to purchase LNG after holding talks with several U.S. producers and a Russian producer in recent months.
It isn’t clear whether the gas will be used to power the kingdom’s local economy, or sold on to international buyers.
The deal demonstrates how the U.S. energy boom is dramatically changing global trade. Historically, Saudi Arabia has been a major supplier of oil to the U.S. But with the evolution of shale drilling in the U.S., the Energy Department predicts America will become a net energy exporter next year.Newsletter Sign-up
Shale has catapulted the U.S. to being one of the top shippers of LNG, with the Energy Information Administration forecasting it will become the world’s third-largest exporter this year.
Aramco has signaled that it intends to boost its gas investments by tens of billions of dollars, domestically and internationally, following similar moves by major energy companies.Royal Dutch Shell PLC and BP PLC are reorienting their energy portfolios toward gas as demand growth for it is expected to outpace oil.
Aramco doesn’t produce any oil and gas abroad, and while the kingdom’s own gas reserves are some of the largest in the world, they are hard to extract and high in sulfur, making them more expensive to process.
“The cheapest gas is in Russia, the U.S. and Qatar,” said Thierry Bros, senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, adding that if it had been economic and competitive, Saudi Arabia would have exported its own gas years ago.
Saudi Arabia burns some of its oil for power generation, reducing what could otherwise be exported, and has plans to boost domestic gas output to address this.

“The logical economic choice would be to burn gas at home because it is lower cost and cleaner and export the liquids,” said Christopher Gonclaves, managing director of energy at U.S. consulting firm Berkeley Research Group LLC.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-arabia-strikes-deal-to-buy-u-s-natural-gas-11558487974

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Chemical Security News

Ex-NSA Official Urges Utilities to Beware of Russian Hackers

May 22, 2019 | E&E Energywire

By Blake Sobczak

Russian hackers pose a greater threat to U.S. critical infrastructure than their Chinese counterparts, a former intelligence official warned water utility executives in Washington yesterday.
"When I think about the Chinese and the Russians, they're both dangerous: Both of those are in conflict with us," said Chris Inglis, former deputy director of the National Security Agency. "But the Russians are far more dangerous because they mean to do us harm. Only by doing us harm can they achieve their end purposes."
Beijing poses a major cyberespionage threat to U.S. companies but, in contrast to Russia's government, can be more effectively deterred based on its close ties to the American economy, Inglis said at a cybersecurity symposium hosted by the National Association of Water Companies.
"Why are the Russians, as we speak, managing 200,000 implants in U.S. critical infrastructure — malware, which has no purpose to be there for any legitimate intelligence reason?" asked Inglis, now managing director at Paladin Capital Group and a visiting professor at the U.S. Naval Academy. "Probably as a signal to us to say: We can affect you as much as your sanctions can affect us."
Inglis is reportedly a leading candidate to helm the NSA in the event President Trump splits the dual role of NSA and U.S. Cyber Command director into two separate positions. Gen. Paul Nakasone currently leads both agencies, which are responsible for spying on foreign communications and leading U.S. cyberoffensive actions against adversaries like North Korea and Iran.
Energy and water utilities' interest in Chinese and Russian cyberwarfare capabilities has spiked since January, when U.S. intelligence director Dan Coats assessed that either country could disrupt U.S. critical infrastructure by cutting off a gas pipeline or temporarily disabling part of the power grid.
Water suppliers have reported squaring off against some of the same state-backed hacking teams, and speakers at yesterday's conference discussed the latest threats and best practices for the sector (Energywire, March 28).
David Ortiz, deputy director for the Office of Electric Reliability at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said trends in the energy sector carry over to other critical infrastructure owners, as well.
"Your infrastructure systems are going to become more and more dependent on the hardware and software of industrial control systems," he said, noting that cybersecurity "is going to be an ever-evolving process, not just because the threats are more sophisticated, but also because the technology is evolving."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2019/05/22/stories/1060375055

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Transportation and Infrastructure News

(ACC Mentioned) Rail Regulatory Board to Hear Shippers Speak on Demurrage and Accesorial Charges

May 22, 2019 | FreightWaves

By Joanna Marsh

At least 35 groups will be testifying before the Surface Transportation Board (STB) this week to provide their perspective on how the Class I railroads assess demurrage and accessorial charges.
(Demurrage is issued when cargo exceeds time allotted sitting at a terminal. Accessorial charges are charges made for performing freight services beyond normal pickup and delivery.)
The topics have become controversial because some shippers say the changes that the Class I railroads have made in administering the charges are unfair. Because of the interest in the topic, the board will hear testimony for two days, May 22 and May 23, on whether changes need to be made in how the Class I railroads assess these charges.
The railroads that adopted precision scheduled railroading have also changed their policies on demurrage and accessorial charges, often upping fees and narrowing the window for how long a shipper can hold a railcar. The railroads argue that the changes are necessary because they provide a financial incentive for shippers and other parties to turn railcars around faster. The railroads have also said that some bulk shippers have used the railcars as storage units, and so prescribing these charges discourages that practice.
But shippers say the charges are unfair because sometimes the slower turnarounds are the fault of the railroad and not the shipper, and yet the shipper gets penalized but the railroad does not. Terminals also might not have the equipment or chassis available to help turn the railcars around at the time when the turnaround is scheduled. Possible themes that could be discussed at the two-day hearing this week include whether the railroads should also be penalized for not turning around railcars in a timely fashion and if the turnaround timeframe should be extended.
The groups testifying before the board this week include trade and shipper groups ranging from the American Chemistry Council to the National Industrial Transportation League, to terminal and warehouse operators such as Kinder Morgan to government groups such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In addition, representatives from the Class I railroads will also be testifying at the hearing. The witness list is available here.
Other parties have provided written comments to the STB, and those can be found by searching here and using proceeding number Ex Parte (EP) 754.
The hearing will not have a live video feed available, although a hearing transcript will be provided on STB’s website as soon as it is available.
After the board hears the comments, there are several actions that could occur next, according to former board chairman Dan Elliott. After reviewing all the comments, the board can take no action, put out an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking, use its investigative authority to dig deeper or set up a more informal process and track the railroads’ progress in making changes.
Elliott didn’t have a guess on which way the three-member board might decide. But they could take action sooner rather than later, instead of waiting for two additional board members to join their ranks.
“These three members seem ready to do something if need be,” Elliott said.
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/rail-regulatory-board-to-hear-shippers-speak-on-demurrage-and-accesorial-charges

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Senate Democrats Detail Climate Requests for Transportation Bill

May 21, 2019 | Inside EPA

More than 40 Senate Democrats are urging the leaders of the environment committee to include at least $2.5 billion per year for climate mitigation and resilience investments in the panel’s upcoming reauthorization of the surface transportation program, due in 2020.
Led by committee member Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), the May 21 letter urges Environment & Public Works Committee Chairman John Barrasso (R-WY) and raking member Tom Carper (D-DE) to commit to a bill that “takes meaningful steps to address the transportation sectors’ contribution to climate change and makes necessary long-term investments to ensure our nation’s infrastructure is more resilient to the variety of hazards posed by future climate conditions.”
The letter says it is “essential” that the surface transportation reauthorization address climate change because the sector “is now the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in our economy. Electricity generation and the industrial and residential sectors have reduced emissions in recent years, yet transportation-related emissions continue to increase."
It adds that state and local agencies that plan, build and operate the networks “must be given the guidance and funding necessary to reduce the carbon-intensiveness of the transportation sector.”
One step the lawmakers suggest is promoting electric and hydrogen-fuel cell vehicles, including by investing in charging and fueling infrastructure. They call for at least $500 million per year from the Highway Trust Fund to be used to install such infrastructure along the national highway system. More than 44 states and the District of Columbia have already designated “clean corridors,” and providing federal funding is “a natural next step.”
Another step is to encourage more efficient and affordable modes of travel such as biking, walking, rail and public transport. “We support mandatory funding for climate incentives of at least $1 billion per year to implement emissions-reducing transportation plans,” the letter says, and adds that can be achieved by a combination of local performance targets, incentives and funding flexibilities.
Beyond lowering GHG emissions, “we must also take steps to protect our nation’s infrastructure against damage from extreme weather events,” the letter says, urging the committee to include “at least $1.5 billion per year to build out resilient infrastructure and promote long-term thinking about the resilience of new and existing infrastructure assets.”
Cardin is joined by 40 members of the Democratic caucus, a figure that is significant because it suggests they could have the votes to block passage of any legislation that lacks the requested climate funding.
President Donald Trump has been negotiating with Hill Democrats on a possible $2 trillion infrastructure packagethat would include transportation and other sectors, though observers say any deal could still fall through over disagreements on how to pay for the package, among other issues.
https://insideepa.com/daily-feed/senate-democrats-detail-climate-requests-transportation-bill

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Trump Throws Trade Curveball at Democrats

May 22, 2019 | E&E Daily

By Geof Koss

President Trump last night upped the ante on talks with congressional Democrats, calling for Congress to first approve his sweeping trade deal with Canada and Mexico before turning to a $2 trillion infrastructure package.
In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Trump said the Hill should approve the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement before turning to infrastructure.
"This path-breaking deal, already agreed to by the governments of Canada and Mexico, will boost employment growth and create millions of high wage jobs," Trump said.
The president's proposal, which comes ahead of this morning's White House meeting between Trump and Democrats to talk infrastructure, raises new hurdles given the uncertainty about the trade deal's fate on Capitol Hill (E&E Daily, May 21).
How to pay for an infrastructure package, which Trump and Democrats agreed could total $2 trillion, remains unresolved. Both sides discussed the issue broadly during the first meeting on the issue, but there doesn't appear to be a broad enough bipartisan consensus to pass any funding mechanism yet.
Trump chided Democrats for not having a unified position on pay-fors and accused them of canceling a meeting between congressional and White House staff on the matter.
He again ticked off a number of areas that an infrastructure bill should address, including roads, bridges, wastewater and "industries of the future."
Trump also touched on energy when noting "areas where we diverged," adding that "the administration believes that permitting reforms and energy-related infrastructure investments are important priorities."
The letter also may raise the stakes for transportation reauthorization, which Trump suggests could be the legislative vehicle for the broader infrastructure package.
He notes the expiration date of the current transportation law, September 2020, which is a little more than a month before Election Day.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2019/05/22/stories/1060376015

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Virtual Pipelines: A Dangerous New Way to Transport Fracked Gas by Truck

May 21, 2019 | DeSmog (Blog)

By Justin Nobel

For several years a mysterious fleet of tractor trailers loaded with natural gas cylinders has been crisscrossing U.S. roads, and in the dark early morning hours on Sunday, March 3, one drove off a highway near Cobleskill, New York, careened down an embankment, and flipped over. The driver had fallen asleep, according to a New York State police accident report, the truck was demolished, and “several tanks ruptured and were leaking” natural gas. Five nearby homes were evacuated.
For retired New York Department of Transportation commercial vehicle inspector Ron Barton, an alarm bell he had been ringing for months suddenly grew even more urgent. “This is a catastrophe waiting to happen,” says Barton.
The trucks are part of a little-known system of moving natural gas called “virtual pipelines.”
What Are Virtual Pipelines?
The practice involves loading cylinders filled with compressed natural gas (CNG) onto specially designed trucks and hauling the gas between existing pipelines or to areas not connected to a natural gas distribution system, such as rural towns, and remote factories, universities and hospitals.
Many environmental groups appear unaware of the topic, virtual pipelines have received virtually no national media attention, and some regulatory agencies seem unsure how to handle them.
“The concept,” wrote Pennsylvania energy expert John Siggins in a 2016 report, “was born out of the lack of pipeline infrastructure in the New England area,” and a natural gas boom in nearby Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale play that lowered gas prices. “As the shale energy revolution took off,” wrote Siggins, “a system for off-pipeline natural gas deliveries became of interest.”
The 2016 report lists nine virtual pipeline companies, operating from Texas to Maine. Two of the most prominent companies are Xpress Natural Gas (XNG), based in Andover, Massachusetts, and Vermont-based NG Advantage.
“I think it’s fair to say that it’s a very, very small part of the overall natural gas distribution system in the U.S. — much, much less than 1 percent of total natural gas used in the country,” said Kathryn Dyl, lead modeler on natural gas with the Energy Information Administration.
So small, her agency hasn’t tabbed up data on just how many companies are involved, where they are operating, or precisely what percentage of U.S. natural gas is being distributed in this manner. Virtual pipelines are “likely to increase,” said Dyl, “but certainly not to an appreciable level and will never be the preferred option.”
Where Are Virtual Pipelines Moving Gas?
Vermont’s Middlebury College as well as a nearby dairy and a hard cider company were served gas by an NG Advantage virtual pipeline from 2015 until 2018, when Vermont Gas completed a pipeline to the area. Presently XNG is supplying gas via virtual pipeline from the Maritimes & Northeast pipeline, in eastern Maine, to a pair of rural medical centers and a large potato farm.
“Rather than taking two or three years to develop a pipeline, we can be there in two or three months,” says CEO and co-founder John Nahill, in a promotional video on the company’s website.
But the route that has ignited Ron Barton and others to action is in central New York, where XNG has installed a virtual pipeline in the same region where the Constitution pipeline, which faced a surge of activism and was denied a key permit by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation in 2016, would have run. The virtual pipeline goes from the gas-rich Marcellus shale fields of Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, to an interstate pipeline in north-central New York called the Iroquois.
“Iroquois Gas Transmission is not waiting for the Constitution pipeline to get built — they’ve found a way around it,” stated a September 2017 article on the far-right industry news site Marcellus Drilling News. “That is … a virtual pipeline is now feeding an interstate pipeline in New York State with fracked gas from Pennsylvania.”
To those in Otsego County, home to a series of picturesque lakes, Cooperstown — location of the well-visited Baseball Hall of Fame — and countless scenic farms, it appears as if the company has constructed an unregulated means of shipping gas born from fracking, a fuel whose extraction their own governor has banned.
“It’s slipping through the cracks and the risks are real,” said Keith Schue, an electrical engineer and member of Otsego 2000, a seasoned local environmental group that is protesting the trucks.
“They say it’s a virtual pipeline and it is,” said Schue. “There are so many of these trucks barreling down the road, literally a convoy of trucks going up from Pennsylvania to New York.”
XNG has not replied to questions.
Under Pressure
Virtual pipeline trucks, such as those operated by XNG and NG Advantage, pull gas out of pipelines at special compression facilities that compress the gas to 3600 pounds per square inch — more than two and half times the pressure of a typical interstate gas pipeline — and inject it into state-of-the-art cylinders that are then loaded onto the virtual pipeline trucks.
Two different companies have received special permits from the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, or PHMSA, to employ these cylinders, California-based Quantum Fuel Systems LLC and Hexagon Lincoln LLC, out of Lincoln, Nebraska. The special permits state the cylinders must have “demonstrated the … ability to protect the tubes from damage due to front, rear, or side impact, and rollover.”
Ron Barton believes the repeated leaking of gas in recent rollover crashes involving virtual pipelines trucks means the trucks may currently be operating unlawfully, in violation of these special permits issued by PHMSA.
A police report for a July 2018 crash in Exeter, New York, involving an XNG virtual pipeline truck stated that natural gas leaked from the truck. Gas leaked again in the Cobleskill crash in March, which involved a truck operated by a North Canton, Ohio-based trucking company called KAG Leasing — KAG has not responded to questions on where they were hauling gas from or to.
“What is going to happen if there is a big roll-over in a populated area and there is a spark?” said Barton. “Now you’ve got a flame or fire.”
The veteran inspector provides three possible pathways that would lead to a truck exploding. Some virtual pipeline trucks employ a special exhaust system, he says, and extreme heat from that could ignite leaking natural gas. The truck’s brakes can get so extraordinarily hot, reaching temperatures of 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, that leaking gas would self-ignite. A severe crash could also generate a spark.
“The fact of the matter is,” Barton told DeSmog, “Pipeline and Hazardous Materials [PHMSA] should issue a cease and desist until the manufacturer can prove that they can meet those requirements of that special permit.” And, he added, “they should be doing an investigation.”
When asked for clarification on whether or not the virtual pipeline trucks were indeed violating the special permit, PHMSAspokesperson Darius Kirkwood said he could not answer the question.
“Generally speaking,” Kirkwood explained, “if someone violates provisions of a special permit, the special permit could very easily be rescinded. That can happen and does happen
Kirkwood later contacted me to say that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, a branch of the Department of Transportation that regulates trucking, “is indeed investigating the incidents.” When questioned on the status of the investigation, Duane DeBruyne, Deputy Director of Media Relations for that agency, said, “We are in receipt of your inquiry and are researching responses.” The agency has yet to follow up.
Mounting Risks for Kids and Climate
On an early spring afternoon with sweeping drifts of snow still covering the central New York landscape, Otsego 2000 president Nicole Dillingham drove along the route of XNG’s virtual pipeline. Earlier this year, the company moved the route away from a particularly narrow road that ran just beside a row of homes on the edge of a large lake.
But the destination of XNG’s virtual pipeline remains the Iroquois pipeline and the company’s trucks still ply her county’s rural roads. “There are no shoulders, there’s no room for error here,” she said. “We have 500,000 visitors every summer, so those trucks are sharing the road with our tourist visitors, and young children.” Near the base of a famously steep incline called Vickerman Hill, she spotted an XNG truck, coming down into the town of Mohawk on state route 28. At the same moment, waiting for the truck to pass so it could turn across 28, was a school bus. “The parents with children on that bus have no idea,” said Dillingham. “People don’t know how dangerous this is.”
Records with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration indicate XNG has had nine crashes in New York since September 2017. The most frustrating part of the situation for residents like Dillingham is that her state officials have ducked the issue.
“PSC [Public Service Commission] does not have jurisdiction to investigate or impose requirements on CNG providers,” Kathleen Burgess, Secretary of the New York State Public Service Commission, wrote to Dillingham in July 2017. A letter that same month from William Leonard, Director of the Office of Modal Safety & Security with New York State Department of Transportation, indicated the situation was out of their hands and should be handled by the U.S. Department of Transportation.
A New York Department of Transportation official said as much in email replies to my questions. Repeated emails to Governor Cuomo’s office on virtual pipelines have gone unanswered.
Above it all looms the specter of climate change. Reports by the United Nations, the U.S. government, and numerous other institutions have painted a dire picture of what will happen to the planet and our civilization if a full kick away from fossil fuels isn’t swiftly implemented.
“We are absolutely condemning our children and grandchildren to a very unhappy future if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels,” said Schue, of Otsego 2000.
One of his biggest concerns with virtual pipelines is that their establishment helps prime a community or region for additional natural gas development. “In delivering gas to institutions you get communities hooked on gas, and that becomes the case to build the pipeline,” Schue explained. “It becomes a vicious cycle.”
Meanwhile, for retired New York Department of Transportation commercial vehicle inspector and whistle-blower Ron Barton, the calculus on virtual pipelines is much more simple. “These containers,” he said, “should not be on the road.”
https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/05/21/virtual-pipelines-fracking-compressed-natural-gas-trucks

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NTSB: Train Engineer’s Confusion and Lack of Automatic Braking System Lead to Fatal 2017 Wreck

May 21, 2019 | The Washington Post

By Ashley Halsey III

An Amtrak train derailed in Washington state in December 2017 because the lack of an automatic braking system allowed the engineer to enter a 30-mile per hour curve too fast due to his inadequate training on the route and the equipment, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded Tuesday.
The crash, which killed three passengers and injured 65 others, came on the maiden trip on a new route, and the NTSB said that the engineer appeared confused and missed two signs warning of the upcoming curve. He also was unfamiliar with a warning signal that activated, alerting him that he was going too fast as he approached the curve, investigators said.
The board said a contributing factor to the severity of the crash was the Federal Railroad Administration’s decision to approve the use of rail cars that did not meet U.S. safety standards. The Talgo series six-rail-car set “poses unnecessary risk to railroad passenger safety when involved in a derailment or collision,” the panel said.
The board also said seat belts should be used aboard trains and that frontward and inward-facing recorders should be used in all train operations.
Despite the engineer’s confusion, NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said the “engineer was set up to fail,” noting that investigators “identified failures up and down the line.”
In addition to the FRA, the report cited missteps by the Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority, the Washington State Department of Transportation and Amtrak.
The panel noted repeatedly that the crash could have been avoided if the automatic braking system known as Positive Train Control had been installed. Commonly called PTC, the system would kick in if an engineer were going too fast.
The hearing pointed out that while Amtrak operated the train, it was running on tracks owned by the transit authority.
“Ideally, Sound Transit could have waited until PTC was completely installed and operational before allowing passenger service” on the new route, said Ryan Frigo, an NTSB investigator.
In addition to the deaths and injuries, the 7:30 a.m. crash on Dec. 18, 2017 near DuPont, caused more than $40 million in damage to the train and the vehicles on the highway below it.
Board member Jennifer Homendy asked Mike Hiller, who studies crashworthiness for the NTSB, whether PTC would have prevented the wreck.
“Yes,” Hiller said.
“This would have absolutely prevented this accident,” Homendy said.
The NTSB has recommended PTC for decades, saying that in the past 50 years the agency has investigated 150 rail accidents that the automatic braking system could have prevented, killing 303 people and causing 6,800 injuries.
But Congress — faced with railroad lobbyists who said the cost would be exorbitant — was slow to act on the NTSB recommendation. It took one of the worst train wrecks in modern history to spur the lawmakers into action: the 2008 head-on collision between a Metrolink commuter train and a Union Pacific freight train in a Los Angeles neighborhood that killed 25 people and injured 102.
Afterward, Congress mandated that PTC be installed on 58,000 of the nation’s 134,000 miles of railroad track, including those most heavily used by passenger rail lines.
The railroad industry said installing computers in locomotives, putting transponders in towers along the rail bed to communicate with those computers and training workers to use them would cost billions. In 2015, they prevailed on lawmakers to extend the PTC deadline by three years, to the final day of 2018.
Congress also agreed that for railroads that made “substantial progress” toward meeting that deadline, the envelope would expand for another two years until the end of 2020.
Racing into the curve at more than twice the posted speed limit, the train in the DuPont crash spun from the tracks in a jumble of cars and locomotives, some staying upright while others toppled onto their sides and one turned over completely.
Three passengers were ejected from the train and killed, and 57 more aboard the train were injured. The curve grew sharpest as it neared an overpass to busy Interstate 5, south of Tacoma, Wash. The train tumbled down onto the lanes of that highway, with the overturned rail car wedged under the bridge that would have carried a train — had it gone more slowly — over the highway. The 200-ton locomotive and 65-ton passenger cars came raining down on either side of the bridge, with one train car balanced precipitously against another that had fallen below it.
Eight people driving on the interstate were injured when they crashed into train cars.
Though Amtrak’s Cascade line dated to at least 1927, previously it had taken a route that skirted the Puget Sound from Tacoma to a point south of DuPont. There had been several test runs on the new track, and the engineer, who was seriously injured, told the NTSB just afterward that he would not have made the trip if he had “any reservations about his readiness to operate the train.”
The DuPont wreck came less than three years after a similar Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia, where an engineer entered a curve at twice the posted speed limit, a crash that killed eight and injured 159 people.
In the Philadelphia wreck, the NTSB concluded the engineer became distracted by rock-throwing aimed at a nearby train and lost “situational awareness.” The board also cited the lack of PTC, which would have automatically slowed the train as it entered the curve, as one of the causes.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/ntsb-train-engineers-confusion-and-lack-of-automatic-braking-system-lead-to-fatal-2017-wreck/2019/05/21/a57628e8-781a-11e9-b3f5-5673edf2d127_story.html?utm_term=.a03d9f47af24

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Environment News

(ACC Mentioned) Wheeler Orders Agency to Rethink Costs and Benefits

May 22, 2019 | E&E Climatewire

By Niina Heikkinen

EPA is directing agency officials to draft new rules for how to include cost-benefit analyses into future rulemaking.
In a memo to the agency's assistant administrators dated last week, Administrator Andrew Wheeler said four program offices would be coming out with notice-and-comment rulemaking aimed at making EPA's approach to cost-benefit analysis more consistent.
The announcement came nearly a year after the agency put out an advance notice of proposed rulemaking on how the agency could reform its use of cost-benefit analysis.
Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt had called out the agency's rules for inflating benefits of rules and underestimating costs.
In their proposals, program offices would have to detail how to balance regulatory costs and benefits in rulemaking. The proposals would also have to be transparent about how the agency was weighing various factors and would have to maintain "best practices" in technical analysis, according to the memo.
Wheeler said the Office of Air and Radiation would be the first to come out with a proposed rule, which is expected later this year.
Separate proposals from the offices of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, Land and Emergency Management, and Water will follow.
"Offices should stagger the development of these proposals and work as expeditiously as possible to promulgate rules accordingly," Wheeler wrote.
Proponents of the change say this is an important step toward greater incorporation of cost-benefit analysis in rulemaking and could serve as a model for other agencies.
Paul Noe, vice president of public policy at the American Forest & Paper Association, heaped praise on EPA.
"I think this is truly a groundbreaking and historic step Administrator Wheeler is taking to move toward an evidence-based regulatory system," Noe said.
While he thought EPA could have proceeded with a single cost-benefit rulemaking, Noe said the agency may want to consider cost-benefit analysis under specific statutes of environmental law.
"Anybody interested in good regulatory policy would embrace this," he said.
The American Chemistry Council released a statement welcoming the proposal to "follow sound economic and scientific principles in benefit-cost analysis."
Meanwhile, the National Association of Manufacturers highlighted the potential benefits of the changes to its members.
"Reforming the way the EPA performs cost-benefit analysis is likely to have a greater positive impact on the future of manufacturing in America than any single EPA regulatory action," NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons said in a statement.
Critics quickly lambasted the agency's plan on Twitter.
John Walke, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's clean air, climate and clean energy program, tweeted there was "zero chance" the agency's actions would result in more effective environmental protection.
"We have 27 months of evidence that this @EPA's agenda is relentless rollbacks of health & environmental safeguards. This is meant to further & cement that agenda," he tweeted.
James Goodwin, senior policy analyst at the Center for Progressive Reform, noted that the agency appeared to be drafting multiple rules because it recognized the agency worked on a number of different statutory standards.
"The new media-based focus doesn't seem to address the fundamental unworkability of this rulemaking," he tweeted yesterday.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2019/05/22/stories/1060376211

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EPA Plans to Rewrite Costs and Benefits of Anti-Pollution Rules

May 21, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Jennifer A. Dlouhy

The Trump administration is planning to write new rules for how it weighs the human costs and benefits of environmental regulations, a move that could make it harder for future presidents to tighten limits on pollution and combat climate change.
EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler directed top agency officials to develop the changes, casting them as necessary to eliminate inconsistencies in assessing regulations. Environmentalists say the agency is altering its math to shrink estimates of how many lives are saved by rules governing clean air, chemicals, and water contamination.
“Benefits and costs have historically been treated differently” depending on the Environmental Protection Agency office and underlying laws at play, Wheeler said in a May 13 memo obtained by Bloomberg News. In some cases, “the agency underestimated costs, overestimated benefits or evaluated benefits and costs inconsistently.”
Wheeler’s May 13 memo does not lay out specific changes, other than prescribing the use of “sound economic and scientific principles.”
Broader Push
The formal rulemaking initiative builds on other efforts by President Donald Trump’s EPA to discount the health benefits of environmental regulations and limit what scientific research that can be used to justify them. Because it would take the form of federal rulemaking that could be finished during Trump’s first term, the changes could bind future administrations until they could be rewritten.
The efforts are part of a “systematic” effort to downplay how much clean air rules help save lives, said John Walke, clean air director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. The administration has repeatedly sought to “deny that there are benefits, lives saved, and monetizable benefits from reducing deaths below air quality standards.”
Advocates—including manufacturers and other businesses that chafed against Obama-era environmental regulations—say the agency has too often given short shrift to the potential price of some mandates and relied on inflated estimates of spared premature deaths and hospital visits to justify what they regard as burdensome rules.
The EPA has already proposed ignoring broad benefits that spring from limiting power plant emissions of mercury, including ancillary reductions in airborne particle pollution -- and associated heart and lung disease -- that isn’t directly targeted by the mandates.
The EPA’s science advisers on May 21 outlined plans for reviewing how the agency estimates and uses such potential indirect benefits. And agency officials have signaled disregarding further health benefits tied to paring the amount of fine particulate matter in the air below an existing EPA standard of 12 micrograms per cubic meter.
Public Science
The EPA is also working to finalize a rule limiting scientific data and studies that could be used to guide regulations, after proposing limits that would bar reliance on research that can’t be reproduced or where the underlying data are not public.
Public health experts say the proposed measure would rule out long-term epidemiological and public health studies, including the Harvard “six cities” study that linked dirty air to shorter lives -- and underpins EPA anti-pollution mandates.
The Trump administration has been trying “to inaugurate a new way of looking at benefits,” former EPA acting Administrator for Air Quality Janet McCabe said at a House hearing on mercury regulation May 21.
Wheeler’s May 13 memo told assistant EPA administrators to developing reforms to benefit-cost analysis that ensure consistent use of key terms in federal law, such as what is “practical,” “appropriate,” “reasonable,” and “feasible” -- frequent benchmarks for mandates on pollution-controlling technology. Wheeler said the first of these rules should come from EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, which is tasked with implementing standards on ozone, limits on particulate matter, and curbs on power plant emissions.
The agency also will update its internal guidelines for analyzing the economics of regulations, including new counsel on what methodologies, assumptions, and models should be used to vet rules.
Federal agencies undertake formal analyses of regulations to assess the potential compliance costs for businesses and consumers, as well as the financial value of their benefits, whether reducing asthma attacks or electric power demand.
The White House Office of Management and Budget then reviews the agencies’ cost and benefit analyses before regulations are finalized.
In a 2017 executive order, Trump directed his agencies to identify regulations that “impose costs that exceed benefits.”
“With these improvements to our regulatory decisionmaking, the EPA is taking another step to provide the public with a more open federal government and more effective environmental and public health protection,” Wheeler said.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/epa-plans-to-rewrite-costs-and-benefits-of-anti-pollution-rules

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House Democrats, GOP Clash Over Need To Count EPA Air Rule ‘Co-Benefits’

May 21, 2019 | Inside EPA

By Stuart Parker

House Democrats and Republicans are clashing over whether EPA should count the “co-benefits” of its air rules in cost-benefit analyses of the policies, a debate that will be key to the future not only of EPA’s power plant air toxics rules but also likely for the agency’s cost-benefit analysis for all future Clean Air Act rulemakings.
At a May 21 hearing of the House Energy & Commerce Committee’s oversight panel, Democrats attacked EPA’s proposal to rescind a key finding that it is “appropriate and necessary” to regulate power plant emissions with its mercury and air toxics standards (MATS) rule. The Obama-era finding is based in part on counting co-benefit reductions of air pollutants not regulated under MATS, but the Trump EPA says this approach is flawed.
Democrats and a wide range of public health and other groups opposing the plan say it risks removing the legal underpinning of MATS and invites litigation to scrap MATS itself, causing serious harm to public health.
House energy panel Oversight & Investigations Subcommittee Chairwoman Diana DeGette (D-CO) said at the hearing EPA is “acting on its own initiative” to ignore the real health benefits of MATS that stem from co-benefit emissions reductions. Such reductions include cuts in fine particulate matter (PM2.5) achieved as a beneficial side effect of the control technologies power plants install to meet the mercury and air toxics limits under MATS.
Opponents of tough EPA air regulation have long argued that the agency cannot rely on co-benefits to justify rules, but defenders of MATS say that regulatory review procedures required by the White House since the Reagan administration require full consideration of “ancillary” costs and benefits of regulation.
DeGette said that EPA in the MATS rollback proposal claims its new stance on discounting co-benefits responds to a 2015 Supreme Court remand, but “the Supreme Court never told EPA to enact a new policy.” EPA is “ignoring key realities and new information” on costs and benefits, she said.
Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-MA) said the Trump EPA “disregarded” co-benefits in order to support its “dangerous and misleading proposal,” which in fact may lead to MATS itself being eliminated.
The agency’s argument is based on the premise that because EPA does not propose in the MATS plan to “de-list” power plants as a source of air toxics under Clean Air Act section 112, MATS will remain in effect. Legal precedent requires such de-listing to scrap emissions limits, the agency argues. Democrats and most witnesses at the event argued that the agency’s proposal is unwarranted and exposes MATS to needless litigation risk.
GOP members generally defended the plan and accepted the agency’s argument that MATS is safe even without the existence of the appropriate and necessary finding. But EPA declined to send an official to the hearing to defend its proposal, which frustrated lawmakers of both parties.
Estimated Benefits
Democrats and Republicans focused much of their debate on EPA’s treatment of co-benefits, and of other air rules going forward. MATS derives much of its EPA-estimated benefits from reductions in PM2.5, which is not a hazardous air pollutant (HAP) regulated under air law section 112.
New data is emerging from Harvard School of Public Health, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and elsewhere to suggest that the direct benefits of cutting HAPs under MATS is orders of magnitude greater than previously thought -- perhaps up $3.7 billion annually, compared to the original rule’s 2011 estimate of only up to $6 million. However, much of the rule’s benefit projection still relies on PM2.5 co-benefit reductions.
In its 2011 calculations, EPA put the total benefits at up to $90 billion annually, dwarfing the estimated costs of at least $9 billion per year. Now that MATS is fully implemented, the rule’s costs are thought to be far lower, amounting to some $18 billion in total since 2016.
EPA in its new proposal relies on a reinterpretation of its 2011 cost-benefit analysis for MATS, finding that the massive disparity between HAP-only benefits and costs requires it to scrap the Obama-era appropriate and necessary finding. The agency says this is required to comply with the Supreme Court’s 2015 holding in Michigan v. EPA, in which the court in a 5-4 ruling said that EPA was wrong to exclude any consideration of costs in the finding.
The Obama EPA in 2016 issued a supplemental cost finding in response, offering two different rationales for deciding it is still “appropriate” to regulate power plants. The first relied on a “cost reasonableness” assessment, the second on the 2011 cost-benefit analysis developed for MATS.
Opponents of MATS reject both rationales, and litigation is still in abeyance against the Obama EPA’s supplemental cost finding in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit case Murray Energy v. EPA.
However, much of the utility sector now wishes to keep MATS in place in order to protect large investments already made in compliance, putting EPA and GOP lawmakers in a delicate position.
Full Energy & Commerce Committee ranking member Greg Walden (R-OR) said EPA’s decision to scrap the Obama cost finding, yet keep MATS in place, “makes sense” and is “logical.”
Walden was equivocal on EPA’s duty to consider co-benefits in rulemaking. The Obama administration’s approach is “open to argument,” because the Clean Air Act “is silent on whether to consider co-benefits,” Walden said, adding that he “strongly suspects” the issue will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court.
At oral argument in Michigan, Chief Justice John Roberts was skeptical of the Obama EPA’s arguments in favor of justifying MATS based on co-benefits, but the court’s opinion authored by the late Justice Antonin Scalia did not reach the issue. The ruling also explicitly did not require EPA to develop a full-blown cost-benefit analysis for the MATS appropriate and necessary finding, merely that EPA should consider costs in some form.
Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY) pressed witness Michael Livermore, a law professor at the University of Virginia, on whether EPA is legally required to exclude co-benefits from its cost-benefit analysis.
“Absolutely not,” answered Livermore, who said “Michigan v. EPA stands for the proposition that agencies should look at costs and benefits more widely, not less so.”
Livermore testified that EPA’s approach sets a “dangerous precedent” for federal agencies to pick-and-choose cost and benefit evidence to support predetermined policy outcomes, rather than looking objectively at costs and benefits as required by White House Office of Management and Budget guidelines.
‘Course Correction’
A key issue resurfacing in the discussion is whether EPA can legally regulate “criteria” pollutants such as PM2.5 as co-pollutants under air toxics provisions when the criteria pollutants are subject to the separate requirements of the national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) program. States have primary responsibility to implement the NAAQS under state air quality plans.
GOP witness and attorney Adam Gustafson, when pressed by oversight subcommittee ranking member Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY), said the Obama administration “usurped states’ prerogative” to implement NAAQS using a range of options of their own choosing by forcing PM2.5 reductions through MATS.
In his testimony, Gustafson called EPA’s MATS proposal “an important course correction” in how the agency conducts cost-benefit analysis. He accused EPA of “double-counting” PM2.5 reductions that would be made through the NAAQS program anyway, saying MATS violates an “express prohibition” on regulating criteria pollutants through air law section 112.
Gustafson also reprised a longstanding argument that because EPA must set NAAQS sufficient to protect public health and the environment with an “adequate margin of safety,” it cannot count benefits deriving from PM2.5 cuts to levels beneath the level of the NAAQS.
Gustafson noted that in addition to Roberts, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in his prior role as a judge on the D.C. Circuit also expressed strong opposition to the Obama EPA’s disregard of implementation costs in the appropriate and necessary finding, suggesting that the Trump EPA approach might find a sympathetic audience in the current high court.
But Livermore countered that NAAQS are not set to a “zero risk standard,” and that reductions in PM2.5 below the level of the NAAQS still produce real health benefits.
Witness Janet McCabe, former acting head of EPA’s air office during the Obama administration, warned that the Trump administration wants to use the MATS rule as the “flagship” for its new, more restrictive approach to cost-benefit analysis, that would make rules appear much less cost-effective. McCabe stressed there is no legal compulsion for EPA to shift its approach to co-benefits, because the Obama EPA responded to the high court directive in Michigan in its 2016 supplemental cost finding.
Speaking to Inside EPA after the hearing, McCabe said that the NAAQS, as public health standards, do not ensure “no injury or effect” because NAAQS are not intended to be zero effect standards. Hence meaningful benefits can still be derived from reducing pollution below the level of the current NAAQS.
This is especially so for a pollutant such as PM2.5, various air quality experts agree, because it appears to have no safe threshold.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/house-democrats-gop-clash-over-need-count-epa-air-rule-%E2%80%98co-benefits%E2%80%99

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Dems Boost Climate Programs in Jab at Trump

May 22, 2019 | E&E Climatewire

By Adam Aton

Democrats are beginning to test how much climate policy they can enact with one chamber of Congress.
House Democrats want to use the appropriations process to boost climate initiatives across government. Central to that effort will be the funding bill for the Interior Department, where Democrats have identified points of leverage on research, land management and indigenous rights. The process also gives Democrats a chance to test-drive their environmental messaging as the 2020 campaign gets underway.
House appropriators today will mark up an Interior-EPA bill that offers big funding boosts while targeting two of the Trump administration's signature proposals: opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling and expanding offshore drilling (E&E Daily, May 21).
The bill also aims to rejuvenate Interior's climate programs, which lawmakers and conservation advocates say have gone dark over the past two years.
The Landscape Conservation Cooperative Network, a set of large-scale conservation programs that emphasize climate adaptation, would see its $12.5 million budget protected with additional armor.
Conservatives have targeted the low-profile cooperatives for fear they would provide justification for blocking energy development across large swaths of land (Climatewire, June 6, 2018). Earlier this year, lawmakers said they had heard several cooperatives had ceased operating.
The Interior funding bill's accompanying report carries a terse direction: "If any LCC is not currently operating, the [Fish and Wildlife] Service is directed to reestablish it."
Democratic appropriators, who have complained about Interior withholding information on the cooperatives, also stipulated the department must submit to the committee detailed reports — including each LCC's staffing, funding and work history — as part of any request to alter the program.
The department's Climate Adaptation Science Centers would also see a roughly 50% funding boost to almost $38.4 million. That includes $4 million to create an additional center covering the Midwest. There are currently eight of the university-based centers.
If enacted, it would represent a sharp turnaround for the centers after suffering setbacks during this year's 35-day government shutdown (Climatewire, Jan. 8).
Lawmakers accused the department earlier this year of withholding money from the climate centers. Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), who chairs the House Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, said she had to personally intervene in December before the department released the funding (Climatewire, March 27).
"The Committee believes the Administration's attempt to reduce and curtail the activities of these centers is shortsighted and counterproductive at a time when our natural and cultural resources, our communities, and our health are being assaulted by climate change," the funding bill's report says.
The spending package also rejects the administration's proposal to end the Tribal Climate Resilience/Cooperative Landscape program, instead providing it nearly $15 million and directing the Bureau of Indian Affairs to complete a report within 180 days outlining the unmet needs of Alaskan tribes displaced due to climate change.
All these proposals would need approval from the Senate, which has not yet released its draft appropriations bills.
In the meantime, Democrats will continue to contrast their funding plan against the Trump administration's proposal — offering a preview of the environmental messages that could resonate during the 2020 election cycle.
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Oceans and Wildlife, yesterday convened a hearing on the Trump budget for FWS and NOAA.
"Reducing funding for science, wildlife and communities working to increase resiliency in the face of climate change is not wise. It's just passing the buck to our kids and grandkids who will pay the price for these shortsighted, irresponsible decisions down the road," he said.
Huffman called the Trump administration's combination of tax cuts, climate denial and budget cut proposals a "generational theft agenda."
"Young people today could be forgiven for thinking that the generation currently in power is reckless and hedonistic," he said.
Republicans are comfortable playing on that turf. California Rep. Tom McClintock, Huffman's Republican counterpart on the subcommittee, praised the administration for targeting "duplicative" climate research programs.
"Frankly I wish the president had gone farther and consolidated the Fish and Wildlife Service with [NOAA's] National Marine Fisheries Service," he said, noting that such a merger had once been proposed by President Obama.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2019/05/22/stories/1060375741

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BP Shareholders Back Paris Disclosures, Shun Hard Targets

May 22, 2019 | E&E Energywire

By Jenny Mandel

Royal Dutch Shell PLC and BP PLC faced intense pressure on climate change at their annual meetings yesterday as protesters sought to disrupt the gatherings and draw eyes to their cause.
Greenpeace protesters blocked the entrances to BP's London headquarters with heavy boxes, placed during the night by crane lift, with protesters locked inside. The spectacle did little to disrupt the annual shareholder meeting, which the company held 500 miles away in Aberdeen, Scotland, in what the company described as a nod to its North Sea operations.
In Aberdeen, some protesters inside the meeting set off an emergency alarm as BP CEO Bob Dudley addressed attendees, while others yelled, "This is a crime scene," according to Reuters.
Similar demonstrations are likely to mark gatherings to be hosted by Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. next week, but activist investors have made less headway on policy at the U.S.-based companies.
Climate protests have become a fixture of energy company gatherings, as demonstrators outside seek attention for the less showy corporate engagement taking place within.
In a vote at the BP meeting, shareholders approved a resolution to align the company's business strategy and project investments with the Paris climate agreement, but they voted down a proposal that the company restrict emissions from the sale of its products, which BP executives maintain are beyond their control.
The resolution on business strategy disclosure was put forward by the global advocacy group Climate Action 100+ and received a 99% approval from shareholders following an endorsement by BP's board of directors. It requires the company to disclose the climate-related risks that it faces, especially related to the competitiveness of its assets if global policies are enacted that force a cutback in oil and gas development in favor of non-carbon energy sources.
The resolution on carbon from energy products was advanced by a group called Follow This and called on the company to curtail emissions not only from its operations, which makes up a significant minority of oil- and gas-related greenhouse gases, but from the burning of the oil, gas and other products that it sells, as well.
Both measures address company emissions as they relate to the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting global average temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.
In a notice of its meeting, BP urged shareholders to vote against the product-related proposal, saying it would "restrict the flexibility BP needs to adjust to the pace and direction of the energy transition as it unfolds and could significantly inhibit our ability to deliver long-term shareholder value by limiting future portfolio choices."
In December, Shell broke new ground when it said it would set targets to limit those "scope 3" emissions from energy products that it sells beginning in 2020. The plan was announced alongside a linking of executive pay to Shell's climate performance and a target to cut its climate footprint in half by 2050 (Greenwire, Dec. 3, 2018).
At its own annual meeting yesterday in the Netherlands, Shell received some praise from activists — along with jeers — for its climate response.
"Shell's approach is beginning to demonstrate that it is possible to have a business strategy that is aligned with the need to transition to a low-carbon economy, while also ensuring that the company is financially successful," said Adam Matthews, the director of ethics and engagement for the Church of England Pensions Board, an investor group at the forefront of Climate Action 100+'s advocacy efforts. He spoke at the annual meeting.
Shell CEO Ben van Beurden welcomed the positive attention but called on other energy companies to step forward. "Our company wants to be on the right side of history and we are doing everything that is needed, but we cannot do it alone and as a matter of fact even the entire energy industry cannot do it on its own," he said at the meeting, per Reuters.
The Shell meeting was protested by activists in jumpsuits from the group Code Red. A spokeswoman for the group, Talissa Soto, told the board the company should be disbanded for its contributions to global warming.
"We will tax you, regulate you, split you up," Reuters reported her saying. "Today you are witnessing the last ever" Shell annual general meeting.Exxon, Chevron under pressure
Those trends will continue to play out next week when Exxon Mobil and Chevron hold their annual meetings May 29 in Dallas and San Ramon, Calif., respectively.
Last month, the Securities and Exchange Commission let Exxon duck a vote on a shareholder resolution requiring it to lay out climate goals in line with the Paris climate accord, judging that forcing the company to publish those goals would be tantamount to requiring the company to comply with the international agreement (Energywire, April 3).
The New York State Common Retirement Fund and the Church of England's investment fund, which were behind the proposal, expressed frustration with Exxon's pushback against the planning measure and announced that they would instead support a shareholder proposal to split the two roles now filled by Darren Woods as Exxon's CEO and board chairman.
"When the CEO serves as board chair ... it raises serious questions that the board may be merely a rubber stamp instead of providing genuine oversight," New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said at the time.
"Exxon's board's refusal to adequately address significant shareholder concerns and properly account for climate risk in its operations, even as its competitors do so, presents a governance crisis," DiNapoli said, encouraging other investors to support the step.
That shareholder proposal has become the lead issue among a slew of climate-related measures up for a vote at Exxon's meeting next week, said Kathy Mulvey, the climate accountability campaign director at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Other questions to be put before shareholders include a call for the board to establish a committee on climate change, and proposals that the company disclose its lobbying and political contributions.
The lobbying disclosure question jumped up in prominence after Shell published a report on the industry groups that it belongs to, under similar pressure. Last month Shell said that it would be leaving the refining trade group American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers on account of "material misalignment" with the group on climate change policy.
The move left observers wondering whether higher-profile groups like the American Petroleum Institute and U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which have staked out similarly conservative positions on climate, could also come under pressure (Energywire, April 4).
Chevron initially faced an investor resolution to address emissions associated with its operations and product use but was able to avoid putting that issue to a vote. Mulvey said the company did not fight a proposal to report on its climate-related transition plan, which will be presented to voters next week but likely win limited support.
Asked about how European oil and gas companies have pulled ahead of their U.S. counterparts in responding to investor pressure, Mulvey said the state of play there is exerting a pull on companies here.
"To the extent that we're seeing Shell and BP start to make some commitments to share owners there, I think those same share owners will be impatient if Exxon and Chevron fail to make commitments and fail to keep up," she said.
The gap is smaller when you look at what companies are doing on the ground, she added. "In that sense, BP and Shell have gotten out of the gate, but they're not very far down the track."'Unprecedented uncertainties'
A recent analysis by the International Energy Agency reflected the conflicting pressures on oil and gas companies. It portrayed the global energy industry as at a crossroads, torn by conflicting visions for global energy use over the coming decades.
Current investment by oil and gas companies in developing petroleum resources is too low to support the pace of global consumption and risks shortfalls and price spikes on the current path, the IEA report warned. And yet oil and gas investment is too high, and investment in alternatives too low, to put the world on a path to reining in climate change.
"Energy investments now face unprecedented uncertainties, with shifts in markets, policies and technologies," Fatih Birol, IEA's executive director, said in an introduction to the report.
"But the bottom line is that the world is not investing enough in traditional elements of supply to maintain today's consumption patterns, nor is it investing enough in cleaner energy technologies to change course," Birol said. "Whichever way you look, we are storing up risks for the future."
The tug of war over climate commitments comes at a time when oil and gas companies have been testing investments in alternative energy technologies like electric vehicles, wind and solar, and carbon capture and sequestration.
Earlier this year Shell bought EV charging company Greenlots, while BP recently bought Chargemaster, the largest charging network in Britain. Both companies have also invested in renewables over the years.
In a blog post yesterday, Luke Fletcher, a senior analyst with environmental advocacy and disclosure group CDP, said European oil and gas companies including BP, Shell, Eni SpA, Equinor ASA and Total SA are investing most heavily in low-carbon energy, but industrywide spending in the sector last year was 1.3% of total capital expenditure.
"Investors are putting increasing pressure on oil and gas companies, with the number of climate shareholder resolutions filed more than doubling in the last five years compared to the five years prior," Fletcher said. "Resolutions calling for companies to report on portfolio resilience and 2-degree [warming limit] analysis are gaining an increasing share of the vote."
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2019/05/22/stories/1060375867

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Oxy, Carbon Engineering to Build Largest Carbon-From-Air Plant

May 21, 2019 | BNA Daily Environment Report

By Abby Smith

Coming soon to Texas’ Permian Basin: the world’s largest direct air capture facility.
The project will be a partnership between Carbon Engineering Ltd., a Canadian-based direct air capture developer, and Occidental Petroleum Corp., the two companies announced May 21 at the CO2NNECT conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo.
Direct air capture technology separates carbon dioxide directly from ambient air—as opposed to removing carbon from the emissions of power plants and other facilities, like other carbon-capture systems. The carbon dioxide is then stored underground or used, instead of being released into the atmosphere where it causes global warming.
Occidental, which along with Chevron Corp. invested in Carbon Engineering earlier in 2019, intends to use the captured carbon for enhanced oil recovery in the Permian Basin. That process injects carbon dioxide into oil reservoirs to extract oil that could otherwise not be extracted.
‘A Historic Moment’
The facility would initially capture 500,000 tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide each year, but with the goal of building additional facilities to significantly increase that capture rate, the companies said.
“This is a historic moment for Carbon Engineering and also for the wider direct air capture industry,” Steve Oldham, Carbon Engineering’s CEO, said during remarks at the conference. “This plant will be 100 times larger than any of the direct air capture plants in the world.”
Only 11 direct air capture facilities currently are in place around the world, and none is large-scale, according to a May 9 report from the Rhodium Group, an independent research firm.
Oldham wouldn’t provide an exact cost to build the facility because he said the company is still working out the commercial terms. But he said it would be in the “hundreds of millions” of dollars.
“On the dollars per ton, I think we will be much lower than $200 per ton for the first plant,” he said.
Emissions Control ‘Not Enough’
Carbon removal through technologies like direct air capture is a critical piece of meeting global climate goals under the Paris Agreement to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), international climate and energy agencies have said.
“Emissions control is not enough. We need to be working on” emissions already in the atmosphere, Oldham said.
The project also offers a boost for Occidental, which has long been a major player in the enhanced oil recovery space.
Direct air capture technology by Carbon Engineering provides Occidental carbon dioxide at lower cost than some of the carbon dioxide the company currently sources, said Vicki Hollub, the oil major’s CEO.
And Hollub hopes the project with Carbon Engineering will be an example for other companies.
“In another 100 years, the one thing people will say about Oxy is we act on our conscience,” she said. “We have to make sure we’re providing [shareholders] profits, but we can do that in a way that’s the least cost to the environment.”
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/oxy-carbon-engineering-to-build-largest-carbon-from-air-plant

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Council of Ministers Adopts Directive to Restrict Single-Use Plastics

May 22, 2019 | Chemical Watch

The EU Council of Ministers has adopted a Directive aimed at reducing the impact of certain plastic products on the environment.
Adopted on 21 May, it has been amended in line with suggestions put forward in the same month by the European Parliament.
These include an amendment calling for manufacturers to avoid using hazardous chemical substances in sanitary towels, tampons and tampon applicators, in the interest of women’s health.
The framework of the restrictions process, under the REACH Regulation, says "it is appropriate for the Commission to assess further restrictions on such substances".
The Directive is part of the EU’s plastic strategy and builds on existing waste legislation. It introduces restrictions on certain single-use plastic products, including plastic plates, cutlery, straws, balloon sticks and cotton buds. These will be banned in the EU by 2021.
The approval of the Directive follows a provisional agreement reached by the Parliament and the Council in December 2018 on the proposal, presented by the Commission in May of the same year.
It will be signed by the president of the Council of the EU and the president of the European Parliament at the beginning of June, and published in the EU’s Official Journal. It will enter into force 20 days later.
https://chemicalwatch.com/77771/council-of-ministers-adopts-directive-to-restrict-single-use-plastics

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